Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

The Deputy has raised an interesting issue. The call that we made, along with the Minister, was that we had received the interim guidance a few days before and if we had held onto it without letting the stakeholders know, where letting the stakeholders know means public reflection on it, then people would have said that we were withholding the advice and they could not have a proper debate on it. We were very conscious that this committee's debates on education were due to start the following day and we did not want to hold back on information.

The Deputy made a point on communications. With regard to reopening schools as fully as possible, we are very conscious of the importance for society as a whole to plan for this in the public environment. We are conscious this gives rise to criticism when we cannot answer all of the questions in detail but we need to work them through. If we were doing this in absolute secret, we would be open to a lot more criticism. The real question is what was the alternative.