Mr. Páiric Clerkin:

From an operational point of view, we will have to put in place plans and we will need the buy-in of the whole school community. It will be important that school leaders, staff, parents and, of course, the board of management work closely together because at the end of the day the board of management has to sign off on all these plans.

We mentioned staggered openings. We need to ensure that we minimise the number of people dropping off their children at any one time. These are, however, situations that have been managed successfully. It will have been noted in recent years that it has been unusual for a school to be closed for things like snow days and so on. We have different plans and operational procedures in place to try to ensure safe access to, and safe collection from, school.

Turning to other services, such as breakfast clubs, it will be important that we will be able to put those in place for children. We will certainly put our focus on designing plans that will make it possible for schools to implement safe and orderly access, drop-off and collection from school during this period.