Mr. Mark McDonald:

I am director of schools with City of Dublin Education and Training Board and have responsibility for youth services. Like the Deputy, we welcome the expansion of the school meals scheme. I think all primary schools will be included from 2025. That will be a huge aspect. Having been involved as a school completion programme co-ordinator in a past life and to link in with what Ms Dunne has said, the social element is very important. The most important and basic level is the food provision, but it is actually the social element that sets the atmosphere in a school from breakfast time onwards. Student interactions would often appear on a friendly and relaxed basis as opposed to potential confrontation in the classroom.

On the Deputy's second point on the role schools can have in their linkage with youth work, that is something we have always lacked, not in individual communities but on the national level of trying to connect the two.

Our second level schools are all community colleges. They are called that for a very good reason, because we are supposed to be at the heart of our community in order to reflect and serve it. However, I was principal of two community colleges and if I was the last person out and locking up at 5 o'clock then I was locking up at 5 o'clock and that was it. In her opening statement, Ms Dunne talked about the issue of premises. Having somewhere for young people to go outside of school hours would be beneficial. There are barriers in relation to who is going to do that and protecting the rest of the school but it could be explored.