Mr. John Boyle:

I thank the Deputy. There are two different sets of well-being here. Let us look at the staff for a start. They were very anxious at the beginning about the closure of the schools. As they went into facilitating remote teaching and learning, there was a high level of anxiety among teachers, particularly in primary school. Some were receiving emails from parents at all hours of the night and were correcting work that they could just as easily have done in a classroom in a couple of seconds. I highlight the planning and preparation that has had to go into that "new normal" for the last 12 school weeks. They are coming into the summer now and, please God, they will get a bit of a break. The anxiety will rise again as they go back, particularly with all these questions about social distancing. They are asking if it does not have to happen for them although it has to happen in other parts of the workforce. There is a new provider coming into the field of education to provide for teachers' occupational health. It used to be Medmark but a new company is taking over. A teacher or staff member may be suffering from anxiety or have difficulties, for example, if somebody in their family has passed away over this period or somebody in their family has an underlying health condition. Then there is the whole issue of facing the students again, some of whom also have difficulties with their well-being, their families and their own heads. That support is going to have to be ramped up.

Then there are the students themselves, particularly those who may be at risk, who are vulnerable or who do not always behave, as Deputy Ó Ríordáin mentioned. Some teachers in special schools are going to feel they will need visors, PPE, aprons and gloves. That is all fine but if a teacher finds himself or herself in that situation, it is a great challenge. It is always a challenge but particularly at the time of a pandemic. I mentioned the child and adolescent mental health services earlier, and referred also to NEPS and to advice and guidance from the inspectorate. A document is not enough. There has to be personnel available to the schools. NEPS is always good at a time of a terrible crisis in a school. For many schools, there will be an ongoing crisis of a kind, particularly in September and October. Rather than documentation and well-being policies, we need to see money put into that. More important, we need to see human resources put into schools so that if a teacher has to isolate a child, the teacher is covered and has a chance to get over the trauma of having to bring the sad news to the family that the child, who is only back at school, seems to have contracted the virus. It is going to be a big challenge. If the Government wants to pump money into schools and cleaning, that is fine, and I think we will get that, but we need human resources and that is going to cost a lot of money in the first term of the school year.