Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank everybody for coming. I have met a number of the witnesses in the flesh over the past few years and a few on Zoom as well. It is nice to put the face to the name. We only have five minutes, which is very short. I would prefer to hear from the witnesses. I have two specific questions and then perhaps I could come in at the end again. One relates special school classes. The summer provision programme does not work. It is great for me as a Government TD to be able to say to people "you have more funding than ever before" but, on the ground, obviously, that is not translating. People are not taking up the scheme for one reason or another. There are difficulties there. I think Mrs. Jennings hit the nail on the head that the people that that course was originally designed for are not benefiting from it. They need the most help and attention, specifically during those months where there is no school. I would like to ask the witnesses about the staffing of that course. I sat in a staff room for 15 years professionally and I cannot recall, and I may be wrong, a principal or teacher coming in saying "anybody up for doing summer provision this year?" I genuinely cannot. Is it a case that we need to look at a regional model where schools would band together or is it a case that we are going to compel schools to do it? If we continue to use a discretionary element and allow schools to make the decision, we might end up on the same road we did with the ASD classes, which is part of the mess we are in today. I would be interested if the witnesses could give me a two-minute answer on that.

Ms. O'Mahony is up from Cork, like me, so I may have to go to her for my other two minutes. I know the work Ms O'Mahony does, I know the confines of the space that she is in. It is not practical. She is making the best of what she can, but when I hear that there are 1,028 families coming through her doors every week, bearing in mind the setting she is in, I ask myself how they manage it. Could she give us a picture of how she manages it day to day and what a new site would do for her?