Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On the summer provision, Senator O'Loughlin mentioned an issue with payment. There will be an online claims system for schools to submit payment details for those staff taking part in the school-based summer programme. That should provide for faster and more streamlined payments to staff.

It is important to stress when we are talking about this year's summer provision that extensive consultation was done last year through the inspectorate with advocacy groups and education stakeholders. We introduced a number of measures to encourage schools to participate. All 4,000 schools can participate. I hope the double pay for staff will be an incentive. We appreciate, of course, that staff have been under considerable stress with Covid, and are now dealing with Ukrainian children coming into schools. We have tried to listen to any concerns that staff had previously and reflect those in the new measures. As the Minister indicated, there is an overseer, better preparation times and faster payments for staff. We eased the administrative burden on schools and given greater guidance materials. There is flexibility regarding when schools run the programme, giving them autonomy in that regard. We have also provided for the recruitment of final-year students who are graduating this summer, undergraduates and newly-qualified teachers. We hope that will help as well.

That centralised application process should make a difference. Schools may engage substitute staff and special needs assistants from another school if they are not available in their own school. I hope those measures will make a difference. For Ukrainian children in particular, there is a real opportunity to integrate and have those sort of arts-based activities for well-being, as well as music and drama for language development. It will go a long way in helping them to integrate properly in our schools system.