Mr. Martin Hanevy:

I will try to observe the Chairman's stricture. I will keep it succinct because the committee has the written presentation.

There are a number of key objectives that we are trying to reach with this charter for students and parents. One is to fill what we feel is a gap in the Education Act 1998 by setting out in this legislation the principles that schools must apply in their engagement with students and parents. If one looks at the 1998 Act, one will see some measures that relate to parents or to students but one does not see any cohesive set of principles that set out the way parents or students should be treated by a school. That is the first objective and that will be done in the proposed legislation by replacing the existing section 28, which speaks about grievances narrowly, with much broader legislation. The key thing we are trying to achieve here is a change of culture. Having a statutory charter would bring about changes in how schools interact with parents. The key thing is that if things are done differently at the beginning, or on a day-to-day basis, difficult grievances do not arise or are minimised, simply because the issues are resolved in advance. The charter is about coming at this in a different way than before and trying to front-load measures that will bring about a change of culture.

The second key piece is that we ultimately arrive at a standardised parent and student charter in all schools. The legislation itself is enabling. It sets things out. The key piece of work will begin after enactment, if the Oireachtas decides to enact it. That will be when the Department will have to sit down with the education partners to work out the details and to put flesh on the charter. The Minister is given the power to make them the statutory guidelines. We see that work being done in the manner in which we work with our education partners on many things, that is, where we get together in a room and around a table and have working groups. That is what we mean by consultation when the Bill talks about the Minister producing the guidelines based on consultation that will have taken place. The principles I spoke of at the beginning are sort of the basic skeleton, the Bible if you like, that has to be followed in the making of the guidelines. The real piece of work will be there.

The third key piece we are doing here is the linkage with the Ombudsman for Children. We see that as quite important. It brings in a set of measures where the Ombudsman is not stopped from proceeding with an investigation or examination of a matter simply because an appeal within the school has not concluded, which is the current legal position. One of the heads of the Bill is to remove that. The other is to give the Ombudsman the capacity to examine matters within the charter. The charter itself will be extensive in terms of the things it will cover. They are in the papers we presented. Critically, if the Ombudsman then makes recommendations to a school, either in a formal space or after a formal investigation, this head makes legal provision for the Ombudsman to write to the Minister and say that he or she is unhappy with a situation and that the school does not seem to be taking his recommendations on board. The Minister can then raise that with the school. It is provided for in the law that the school can respond but that ultimately the Minister can give a direction. We have a mechanism here that can bring about change in the school in what is hoped will be the small number of cases that will ultimately arise and arrive with the Ombudsman.