Ms Maeve McCafferty:

Yes. To come in on the point about bringing parents into the school, we have heard back from many of our HSCL teachers that the increased demands for Garda vetting within schools are becoming a real challenge. They are becoming somewhat of a barrier for some parents, particularly in socio-economically disadvantaged areas. It is about getting the balance right, without compromising child protection and so on, obviously, in order that parents are comfortable, are welcome to come into the school and are not met with that additional barrier. Some of them may have had experience in prison and so on, which is obviously a challenge.

Regarding Travellers, I reiterate that we propose that there would be possibly even a shared HSCL teacher in areas of high concentration of Travellers. This might be not just for DEIS schools, but also for non-DEIS schools. Another big gap is in special schools, where there is a very vulnerable group of children as well and a real need to link up the home and the school. Given it has been such a successful scheme, consideration should be given to its expansion to those parents in order that they could have more involvement in the school and more interaction.