Mr. Mark McDonald:

To respond to Senator Pauline O'Reilly's point on resources - I think Senator Mullen made the same point - it is important to say this needs to be properly resourced if we are to meet the challenge. Within that, we can start with some good and easy points or the low-hanging fruit. We have given some examples from the ETBI submission, which has been echoed elsewhere, about initial teacher education. That needs to be looked at but there is also the ongoing training of staff. That is very resource light but its impact can be huge. We spoke about the PLNs where one person is trained in bringing that network back to the staff. It is not about everyone suddenly being experts but about people being able to pinpoint, address and see where issues are coming from and to support them in that.

We gave the example of what happened in Kerry using an interdisciplinary approach. I will give the example of the regional education and language teams, REALTs, and the response to the Ukrainian crisis. I chair the Dublin committee. Very quickly, we brought together the ETBs representing the schools, the NCSE and NEPS and Tusla was represented through the education welfare services. They have come together and worked extremely quickly using an interdisciplinary approach. It is possible. While we are looking for long-term resources, we also have to look at ways we can do this quickly without adding a huge amount of resources with it.