Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Children with special educational needs are among the cohort who we all agree missed out the most when school buildings were closed. They require additional support in school to make up for lost time. However, due to the substitution crisis many schools have had to deploy their special education teachers away from their teaching to cover mainstream absences. This is far from ideal but it is the reality. Last year schools could bank those special education hours to use in other times so that children with additional needs did not lose out. I do not understand why this banking option is not being reintroduced. While the substitution announcement last week is positive, special education hours have been and will continue to be lost without the banking system being brought in. Will the Department safeguard the educational hours while committing to bringing back the banked hours system?

I also have serious concerns with the levels of support that school leaders are receiving from the HSE. It was said that school leaders can still contact the HSE for help but that is not the same as bringing back testing and tracing to their previous levels. School leaders should not have to contact parents of close contacts and organise for antigen tests. They have enough on their plates and many of them are teaching principals. We need to bring back school-specific contact tracing teams but this has not happened. Will this happen? Leaving certificate students and their parents have been in contact with me and they are concerned about the loss of teaching hours due to teacher absences, which cannot be helped. I welcome the initiatives to try to find substitutes but students are missing out for weeks at a time. It varies from school to school and within schools from class to class. How will this be addressed when it comes to setting leaving certificate exams this year?