Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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I welcome our guests from the Teachers Union of Ireland, TUI, the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, ASTI, the Irish National Teachers Organisation, INTO, and Fórsa, who are joining us by video link from committee room 2 and whom we can see, to review the preparations for the reopening of schools and how the reopening is operating in practice. From the TUI, I welcome Mr. Martin Marjoram, president, Mr. Michael Gillespie, general secretary; from the ASTI, Ms Ann Piggott, president, Mr. Kieran Christie, general secretary; from the INTO, Mr. John Boyle, general secretary, and Ms Mary Magner, president; and from Fórsa, Mr. Andy Pike, national secretary, and Ms Liz Fay, industrial relations officer. They are all very welcome to our meeting this morning.

Before we commence the formal proceedings, I advise the witnesses that by virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their evidence to this committee. If they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence in relation to a particular matter, they must respect that direction. They are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable.

I thank all our guests for all the work that each organisation and its members have done to try to get schools reopened safely this week. Everybody is extremely grateful and we look forward to this session.

I invite Mr. Gillespie to make his opening statement and ask him to confine it to five minutes.