Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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I thank all of our speakers for coming before us today. I got to listen to quite a little bit here and I have a few questions. It is funny; it was mentioned that this may not be the utmost priority in many minds in many schools and for many principals. In my area, my priority is building schools and getting space. There is a special needs school in Ballinasloe that is literally fighting for additional accommodation. It has now got a site to build a new school. Children literally do not have space in a classroom, especially during the lockdown. There is a primary school in our area, which is a deprived area according to Pobal and based on the most recent census, and this school has been waiting 25 or 30 years for a new building. That is what we are fighting for. I understand about the priorities. The speakers have mentioned the different priorities of teachers, principals and their own organisations.

I will just pull up a document with some of the questions I wanted to ask. We are here to carry out pre-legislative scrutiny of the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill 2020.

I know I have heard a few comments arising from the previous few contributions from colleagues. An area of priority for me is the roll-out of the delivering equality of opportunity in schools, DEIS, identification models so secondary schools can apply to be part of DEIS and get extra supports put in place to do things like having special needs classes. Again, that must happen and money has been allocated in the budget this year. It is more than €18 million and that should be happening very soon. It should have happened ages ago but anyway.

There is an oversubscription crisis now and the census is due this year. There will be data from that relating to areas of population, where we will have demand and so on. When it comes to oversubscription, what about areas of deprivation and how do we encourage and support parents that come from deprived areas in getting more involved in the likes of boards of management and the application process? How do we engage with them at an early stage and whose role is it to engage with parents at an early stage? Those are three questions in one. There has been a bit about involving boards of management. Do the witnesses have any comments on the census to be done this year? I am posing that question to Mr. Crone and Mr. McKelvey or if anybody else has time to come in, they can. If they want to comment on special needs schools as well, I would appreciate it.