Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Chair and the Minister for their kind wishes. They are appreciated by me and my wife. Baby and mammy are doing great altogether. Thank you very much.

I will start off with the Cork Life Centre. I am encouraged by and welcome the Minister’s statement. I welcome it because it does not seem to suggest, as I feared it would, that everything has been fixed. Everything is not fixed. There is a proposal on the table that is welcome. It is something that could be worked with, but it is not there yet. I welcome the fact that the Minister clearly acknowledged that. I encourage her, and all the parties involved in the Cork Life Centre and education and training board, ETB, to continue to engage and try to reach a solution. I ask the Minister for a commitment to do that: to continue working on this. In addition, I ask her, if possible to state whether she believes that the staff at the Cork Life Centre needs to be supported and retrained. There is a lot of experience there. Perhaps the Minister can give a comment on that.

On the return to school, it is welcome that the schools are back. I commend everyone involved that effort, from parents, teachers, staff to everyone in the Department and the Minister. However, it is fair to say that in some schools the return has been disrupted, it has been challenging and, to be honest, in some places it has been downright chaotic. There are two primary reasons for that. The first is confusion regarding self-isolation, who is supposed to self-isolate and the circumstances relating to close contacts. We have reports that the criteria are going to change and that this has been as good as agreed by NPHET. However, there is no real clarity or certainty in that regard. I have been in contact with principals in my constituency and across the State. Many of them have raised with me the fact that they feel isolated and that they do not feel that they are getting the support they received last spring. They feel that it is too hard to get through to the HSE and that they are being asked to do the job of public health themselves.

I will come back in just later on this, but I just want to ask the Minister if she has picked up the phone to the HSE. Has she asked them if they providing the same resources? I appreciate that there are a number of Departments involved, but this is a cross-governmental issue. Are they putting in the resources? Has she gone to the HSE to say that her staff and principals need help and they are not getting it? That is one question. The other question is that there is talk that the guidelines are going to change and that asymptomatic close contacts will not have to self-isolate. What is happening? Will there be a change on 27 September, or when will it happen? What will the change be? What can we anticipate is going to happen in the next few weeks?