Mr. John MacGabhann:

I might come in on this. Deputy Matthews's first question essentially had to do with the environment of schools. There is clearly a difficulty. Many of the buildings are old. As stated in my submission, the buildings were with a view to congregating students, bringing them together. It was largely an industrial model and it does not work in the circumstances of Covid-19. That is the simple truth of the matter. There is need for improvement but we are realistic. Not everything that we ask or wish for, or that others might wish for, can be done in the hurry that is facing us from now on. The best that can be done is the best that can be done.

The Deputy asked specifically whether each school should have a Covid officer. Largely, one is working within the staffing structure of the school as it stands, with perhaps some supplement. For each officer that one determines one should have for a purpose of oversight, one is probably taking one unit out of the teaching cohort. I am not saying that that should not be done but clearly one has to backfill the gap that one thereby creates. Mr. Boyle made mention of that. That transacts differently at second level where one is looking for subject specific substitution, which is much harder to come by, and impossible in the case of some subjects.

On the digital equalisation, the Deputy listed a number of things. I would say it is a case of "all of the above", but in which order? It is a governmental issue, not just a Department of Education and Skills issue, to ensure that the broadband structure is improved, and it is not good at all in some places.

There is a matter of training but I have to be fair to all concerned. There is now a plethora of training available online. The quality of some of it may not be as it should be, and there probably is need for some quality control of that.

I would have a real concern about giving the education system over to a particular commoditised platform. I do not believe that is necessarily the way to do things and I also do not believe that we should make ourselves the prisoners of any particular product. That would be ill-advised and might have downstream effects we would not wish for.

If I can, I wish to make one observation to do with post-primary schools. It both speaks to what Deputy Matthews said and what Deputy Lahart asked. Can we restrict movement by having students in a base classroom in the same place all the time? We can do that to a very limited extent. We can do it where subjects are set. I refer, for example, to where Irish is on for all second year students at a given time. However, it cannot be done in respect of options and most of our timetable comprises options.

Lastly, in terms of practical issues to do with practical subjects, we are going to have to make pragmatic accommodation to ensure that as much of the syllabi as can be transacted over the course of the coming year is transacted. However, we will have to take account of the fact that, in terms of practical classes where we have multiple users of rare and expensive pieces of equipment, the cleansing regime alone that would be required to conduct such classes will probably not be possible in all instances.

We are going to have to make adjustments to the assessment model as opposed to cutting syllabi per se. We do not want to lose the richness or depth of our syllabi.