Mr. Paul Byrne:

There is a possibility that we will need additional staff. The way we have been looking at it is that we will need resources in the four weeks leading up to the reopening of schools. Preparation will be key for the safe reopening of schools. Earlier, a Deputy asked about morale and building confidence. Communication will be very important. As we put systems and structures in place we need to communicate them to parents, teachers and students so they feel safe when they go back to school. The second part of this is that it will be an ongoing process. While we will have everything prepared for going back in late August and early September, there will be a need to reinforce the good practices that will be developed in the first week throughout the year during the course of this pandemic. Our big ask is that we are able to keep the virus out of schools. To do this we need to have parents and all of the various outside organisations working with us. It will be a team effort and I hope we will keep it out of the schools. The second part is that we will need to have systems in place to deal quickly with an outbreak of the virus in a school, including the follow-up response. If we move towards having blended learning for two weeks to get schools back up and running in the case of localised closures we will need a plan B, which will require an awful lot of time and a lot of resources.