Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and Minister of State, who have been very generous with their time. We are becoming very used to them at this stage and might begin keeping seats permanently reserved for them.

My first point will be brief because it has been made before and I will not belabour it. It concerns the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, DEIS, band schools. I echo the call that we ensure that the reduction in the pupil-teacher ratio is passed on to all such schools. I am very interested in seeing the package coming down the track for DEIS. Can the Minister provide the time line for when we might see that?

I note the very good work with the July provision and the special educational needs, SEN, teams within schools who worked so hard during the first lockdown to maintain the connection between schools and children with special educational needs in particular. There was also the increase in National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, psychologists announced in the budget. All of these are very welcome. I have a question on this however. Did the first lockdown have an impact on the throughput of assessments? We know that within schools teachers will begin the assessment process and that takes a good few months. In fact, it generally takes close to two years to move from the start of an assessment process to the end. Has there been any impact on the throughput of assessments and is there a backlog, seeing as the assessments presumably were not conducted over the closure period?

I raise home-school liaisons. It is an area that was affected by cuts during the last recession and it is very often the children in the most vulnerable communities who pay the price of that. This being the case, will the Minister comment on the increased provision of home-school liaisons?

Lastly, a sentence jumped out at me in the briefing document. It refers to "...the growing number of pupils who are self-isolating at home...". Do either the Minister or the Minster of State have figures available on that? Are we seeing a large increase in the number of children, presumably with underlying health conditions or with parents with such conditions, who are self-isolating at home? How are we tackling that in terms of blended learning? Is this putting additional an workload onto the classroom teachers? Are we looking at a situation where a teacher is delivering content during the day and then trying to deliver content in tandem in the evening time? How large an issue is that in numerical terms and what provision is in place to support teachers who may be having to deal with that issue?