Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her reply but there is still a widespread view in the sector that an injustice was done and that this decision was without precedent. They saw it as something of a stroke from within the Civil Service, to be respectfully honest with the Minister. They felt that while the fee-paying sector, as she rightly says, gets money in terms of the payment of teachers, they get a lot less. As this was in the context of children's safety, it went down extremely badly. Certainly people in that sector who I have been speaking to, including school managers, point out that many of the people who send their children to these schools are not wealthy and many of these schools operate on the basis of the fees they get enabling children who are less well-off to also attend those schools. I respect, and listened to, everything the Minister said but there is a lesson in what happened during the summer. It was not good and it left a bad taste which remains.