Mr. Hubert Loftus:

Yes, the school communities. However, in my job as head of the planning and building unit, I have a remit that spans 4,000 schools, so I have to balance all of them when managing needs. We are conscious of schools' needs, though, and our overarching objective is to ensure every child has a school place.

The Department has done a great deal of work with the education and training board, ETB, sector and other areas on setting up and co-ordinating regional education and language teams, REALTs, to manage the impact of so many Ukrainian children entering our schools. REALTs are useful structures locally for helping to manage some enrolment capacity pressures, including the issue the Senator raised. Educational welfare officers, EWOs, are part of those teams and ETBs are linking in. We also have a direct link into those teams.

The Senator raised the issue of buses to St. Teresa's Special School. I might ask my colleague Ms Mannion to comment.