Mr. John Boyle:

When one thinks about it, in recent years there has been a standardised school year, and every single teacher works every day God gives, within the standardised school year. However, in the middle of a pandemic, these kinds of standardisations do not always work. Had there been that little bit of flexibility it would have helped. I know teachers from the west of Ireland who have not seen their parents since August, and I know many children in schools who have not seen their grandparents. If the early closure meant that before 6 January, women's Christmas, they could visit these relatives, it might have been worth considering. However, as I have said, we were very aware that in the health sector, workers there have been working around the clock and will not be off over Christmas, and that debate has passed.

On the issue of the DEIS programme, I want to emphasise that I think that if the Government was back where it was on budget day, it probably would not have reduced class sizes in DEIS at all. It would have left the issue alone for a couple of weeks and made its budgetary statement that there was €5 million over a full year being made available for DEIS, and that that money would be used to try to deal with the staffing differentials, rather than single out the senior schools and not provide any reductions for the vertical schools, in which there are many children up to sixth class as well.

On the issue of Enniscorthy and the príomhoide and leas-phríomhoide, about three years ago the then Department for Education and Skills had €7 million available to it for school leadership. We get on really well with ASTI, TUI and Fórsa, but I do not believe I have ever been angrier than at that particular time because two thirds of the money was given to post-primary schools and one third to primary schools. The result of that was that St. Eunan's College in Letterkenny announced its new principal and its two new administrative deputy principals on the front of the Donegal Democrat, while the school in Enniscorthy, which used to have a support team of about 30 promoted teachers, now only has ten support teachers for the principal because of the moratorium. That money should have been shared out more equally. It goes back a long way, probably to 1966, when all the money was put into post-primary schools by Deputy Donogh O'Malley and his Department, and rightly so, but at that particular time, post-primary schools were so far behind that they had to get the investment. But who lost out at that time? Primary schools. That has been the case for some time. The Chair referred to the case of a príomhoide in Enniscorthy. I do not know if he is aware of this, but there are two big schools in Enniscorthy, and the principal teachers in those schools earn €15,000 less than principal teachers in secondary schools of the same size with the same number of staff. That is a gross inequality and I referred to it earlier. There is a lot to be done yet, and it will not all be done due to the pandemic, but I am glad that the Chair raised the issue and I thank him for his support of primary principals.