Mr. Stephen Moffatt:

It is quite a delicate balance. The oversight of schools at national level is within the Department of Education but it falls down at a local level to local boards of management. The Government probably has not done enough on voluntary contributions. Additional steps could be taken within the Department and legislation could be brought in around it, so that, for instance, once voluntary contributions are requested from families, the schools and individual teachers would not know who has or has not paid the money.

With uniforms, either the Department has to introduce some sort of sanctioning programme or it needs to go a step further and say that it will govern uniforms, and that a minimum standard has to be adopted in schools. Then the Department needs to apply that. For example, if schools want to have a uniform that might cost €100 and parents are willing to pay that, perhaps that is acceptable. There needs to be an option for the parents who are not in a position to pay that money to pay for a uniform that does not cost that much without dividing the children between those wearing more expensive uniforms. I am not sure what specific sanctions should be taken. It is becoming clear that if the Department of Education is issuing circulars and they are not being implemented on the ground, it needs to be escalated and a deeper analysis of what is happening at a national level and a questioning of whether those circulars are sufficient is needed.