Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I ask the Minister about the shock that fee-charging schools felt when the decision on the Covid package of supports to help schools to reopen safely emerged in August. I recall mentioning it to the Minister briefly when I met her in the corridor of Leinster House. I wrote about it in the Irish Independentat the time.

When it was decided to make a Covid package available, there was major surprise and concern among the fee-charging schools when it emerged that they were to be excluded from the payments. There was a subsequent partial concession to their pleas, with such schools being allowed to apply for the grants but being judged on a case-by-case basis. I understand that this involved a lot of paperwork wherein the schools were required to show that they could not find the resources otherwise. Even where they submitted a financial case there was no transparency about the decision criteria. The sense among the schools was that this was a decision that came from within the Civil Service that reflected a negative attitude to fee-charging schools. An attitude in which the schools were seen as a problem as opposed to being seen as a sector involving many people who are not rich and make sacrifices to send their children to fee-charging schools and who end up saving the State money because those schools are funded to a lesser degree than are those in the non-charging sector. There was a particular sense of feeling wounded about the idea that this was about money that intended for keeping children safe. People felt that if we are going to cherish all the children of the nation equally then we cannot have a situation where families of children in fee-paying schools are subsidising supports for everyone else's children with their own school of choice getting nothing at all. There was a real misstep here and the damage has not been remedied. Does the Minister agree?