Mr. Seamus Mulconry:

We need a far more strategic way of managing change in the primary system. We are bombarding the system with initiatives from all directions and multiple agencies. We need to give principals and schools the time to absorb some of the changes. We also need to re-examine how we develop policy. There is a tendency to look to international best practice and try to apply it in Ireland, but we need to start looking at the best practice in our schools and try to share that around. They are doing extraordinary stuff and it is time that we learned from them and shared their practices to a greater extent, but that will require an infrastructure around schools that allows principals some time. Principals are under extraordinary pressure and they do not have the necessary supports. We estimate that approximately 60% of primary school principals could benefit from an intervention around stress management.