Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

As I said at the start, we welcome the opportunity to be here. Our key message this morning is that the reopening of schools is the number one priority for the Department. I can assure the Deputy that it is the number one thing the Minister has been discussing since her arrival two weeks ago. That the school sector is to reopen schooling as fully, normally and safely as possible at the start of the new school year is a very important message to send out.

We do not envisage widespread blended learning or reduced opening. We really are aiming to open as fully, normally and safely as possible. I have provided clarity on masks; we do not envisage students wearing masks in schools. The only possible situation where we are reflecting on the health guidance that we have is that there would be some mask wearing for older students on school transport. The preferred form of PPE for members of staff who need to be closer to students in the classroom would be visors. A visor retains the vital interaction of facial expression, which is perhaps diminished in the video-conferencing context here but is really important in the schooling context. We envisage that visors would be the most important aspect of PPE for members of staff, particularly SNAs who need to work very closely with students in a learning environment.

On classrooms and capacity, we really want to maximise all classroom space, as Mr. Loftus has said. We are looking at potential room layouts, again in partnership with school management bodies and teacher unions, in order to have a demonstration of such matters in the guidance regarding the options schools can look at, which we plan to issue by the end of July.

The guidance will also cover other issues mentioned by the Deputy, such as supervision outside of the classroom where social distancing is very important. It is important that groups of children from separate classes are kept apart as much as possible in the school environment.