Mr. Páiric Clerkin:

I will clarify, from a primary school point of view, that we are very cognisant of the views of parents and the anxiety within households. We are planning for the safe and orderly reopening of our schools. We want to see all our children, if possible, back in our schools in September. We must have plans which can be safely and successfully implemented. Those plans must build confidence within the whole school community.

The bottom line is that the school principal will be expected to answer all the questions. There will be anxiety among staff, children and parents. We must build confidence to ensure everybody is signing off the same hymn sheet, understands the objective and understands how we are going to implement these plans safely. We must minimise the possibility of the virus getting into schools. We must look at all the challenges we face from the point of view of ensuring the virus cannot be allowed into schools, because we know that situation will possibly mean a school having to be shut down for a time. That is not something we want to see happen.

We welcome the draft plans, but we know further issues need to be examined. One major issue is finance. Flexibility is key in how we will manage the reopening of schools. We are faced with an enormous challenge for our teaching principals. Our teaching principals cannot be expected to implement the plans required for the safe reopening of schools while teaching full-time at the same time. That is just not reasonable and it is not doable. We will need flexibility regarding substitution. We will also need flexibility in ensuring substitution will be available on day one in the case of all-class substitution or all-class absence. These are issues which must be examined and costed. Our understanding is that the Department has committed to providing the extra funding that will be required to meet the extra costs for cleaning, sanitiser and PPE. We also know that there will be increased costs concerning substitute cover.

When we raised these issues with the Department, we were told they are being discussed with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. We do not have any costings regarding those issues, but we know that funding will be required to ensure our schools can be opened safely, our school communities can have full confidence in how we are implementing the plans that are in place and the flexibility that will be required can be implemented successfully. We do not have specific costs, but we know funding is being examined. Substitute cover will be an absolute must to ensure we can provide security for schools to remain open. The same thing applies to the costs concerning cleaning and PPE, etc. We welcome the work the Department has done in putting the procurement framework in place and we will continue to work with it to ensure that is a success.