Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am a bit taken aback by the attitude of Government speakers in particular. If any of the principals who have been in contact with are watching these deliberations, they will be pulling their hair out. Frankly, the return to school was a positive for many schools but there were individual school principals who had never contacted local representatives before in their lives but were forced to do so because of what they termed the shambles that they were dealing with earlier this month. I concede that not much of the responsibility fell at the doors of the Minister or the Minister of State. What happened was due to inaction on the part of the HSE and the inability of the public health teams to make timely interventions with schools. However, there were principals in contact with me who had no option other than to send home entire classes because three, four or five days passed without them hearing from the public health team.

One school of which I am aware has 24 classes and only three CO₂monitors. In addition, we did not get the situation on pregnant teachers sorted in time. We have the catch-up scheme which has been described as completely inadequate by Judith Harford and Brian Fleming in The Irish Times. The scheme does not compare in any way favourably with similar schemes throughout Europe. To return to what has been said previously about literacy camps, I have been contacted by two DEIS schools which indicated that are still waiting to be paid.

This sort of nothing-to-see-here attitude from Government is going to have to be checked because this level of complacency is part of the problem. I would suggest that none of us in Opposition parties have ramped up anxiety or tried to play to a gallery in trying to make people feel as though schools are unsafe. We have been trying to do the right thing. I would also suggest however that if the Government is not hearing what we are hearing, then maybe it is not listening as we are. We can only reflect back what is being said to us.

I take this opportunity to ask again about the interaction between the Department and NPHET. Regulations relating to pregnant teachers changed. Regardless of whether that was completely coincidental because the matter was in the public arena or not, they did change. I would be interested in the Minister's reaction particularly to the situation relating to CO₂monitors and to the time gap which is leading principals being placed in completely impossible situations in some circumstances whereby they can nothing other than deal with problems relating to Covid and individual Covid cases.

When is the citizens' assembly on education going to be established? We speak of anti-bullying, but we still have a situation where 90% of our schools are under the patronage of an institution that thinks homosexual acts are acts of grave depravity. Yet, we are supposed to be serious about tackling homophobic and transgender bullying in schools. I would think that the citizens' assembly on education should tackle that issue.

I also wish to ask about the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill. Almost 12 months have elapsed since I brought an amendment to the House in order to delete the ridiculous provision within that Bill, which was put in at the behest of the private fee-paying school sector, to give schools the opportunity to have 25% of their enrolments set aside for children and grandchildren of past pupils. The Minister said at the time of the introduction of my amendment to delete that provision, that she would come back within 12 months. Those 12 months will be up in the first week of November. What work has been done on that?

As I have the Minister's attention, there is a second level Gaelscoil in my constituency - Gaelcholáiste Reachrann - that really needs her urgent attention. I have written to the Minister and the Taoiseach about this matter and I raised the matter with the Tánaiste last week. I believe the Minister is familiar with the school, which is Donaghmede, Dublin 13. It absolutely needs urgent attention from her and her Department.

Will the Minister address, in the short time I have allowed her, the position in schools? Could we get the literacy camps paid for? Does the Minister know when the citizens' assembly on education will be established? What is the story on the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill?