Mr. Kieran Christie:

I will reply, if I may. Deputy Ó Ríordáin raises an issue that is dear to all our hearts inasmuch as nobody ever wants to see vulnerable students falling out of the system. We have concerns about that, there is no question about it, because it is a real possibility. We note that there will be a programme this summer in schools that operate under the delivering equality of opportunity in schools, DEIS, programme. I hope there will be a decent uptake of that programme to try to address those issues but I suspect it might be only chipping at the iceberg, so to speak.

The Deputy also asked about making up for lost time, for want of a better phrase. There are positives within the system. OECD studies down the years have shown that teachers in Ireland spend more time in their classrooms than the vast majority of teachers in other countries. Making up for lost time will be, to some extent, happily fed by that reality.

There are other means of mitigating what has taken place. My colleague, Ms McDonald, mentioned that the State Examinations Commission could provide more variety in the breadth of examinations.

I would not discount the fact that an enormous amount of work has been done with the generality of such students since March. They are not as far behind as people might imagine. I also might point out that if we are clever in our approach and cut back to the bare bones of what will be important in the coming year, we must consider getting away from initiative overload. That practice has plagued schools in recent years. A new raft of initiatives must be dealt with whenever teachers come in for a new year. We should get back to concentrating on teaching students. There is also a big role for the inspectorate in providing support.

The former Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, is fond of putting phrases from films into his speeches and I will follow suit when I tell Deputy Ó Ríordáin, "I like your thinking". I like what he said about the cash package for schools and see nothing wrong with it. We can use any phraseology we want but there is no question that this is going to be costly. We, and our colleagues in Fórsa and unions that represent other personnel, will be crying out for proper resourcing for the return to school. It is not going to be cheap and there is no point in pretending it will be and that all we need to do is to buy sufficient hand sanitiser. There will be enormous challenges here and the really costly element will not be the sanitising and so on. I hope the Government steps up to the plate because the necessity to source and provide extra staffing for schools will be essential to maximise the potential of what can be achieved.