Rónán Mullen (Independent)
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I will offer a quick word in defence of parents. The people who put their names to this very reasonable letter - Sandra Adams, Julie Anne Collins, Mennatallah Hassan and Niamh Rushe - deserve great credit for putting together a reasoned letter in which they point to particular things that need to be addressed. Sometimes when you are watching a hurling match, the referee gives a free, places the ball 75 m or 80 m out and walks away, and then the player taking the free moves the ball forward 5 m or 6 m towards the goal and the referee comes back and says he cannot do that. That is the way many parents feel about the NCCA and what it is doing.

I return to the previous example, which I have checked since. The phrase in the Equal Status Act is "sexual orientation", not "sexual identity". What does Dr. Sullivan mean? Will he commit today to changing that? If he is talking about sexual orientation, is that necessarily a consideration when considering primary school stuff? If he is claiming to ground it in the Equal Status Act, then he should change it because when people see "sexual identity", they think the NCCA is on a mission. There is no reference to psychological, mental or phsyical health or the well-being of the person in the list of categories on page 32. That is why parents are worried. Can we have a commitment to change that? "Sexual identity" sounds like an ideologically loaded term that is meant to import stuff.

I repeat my question about whether parents can be consulted on the toolkit. It is precisely in the area of well-being that the toolkit matters because people are already worried about what is in some of the textbooks. That is not the NCCA's direct responsibility but the books only follow the lead it is giving. How many parents did the NCCA meet, online or face to face? Is there a precise number, apart from the thousands?

Is the patrons programme in the same position to influence the other five pillars as those five pillars influence each other? Given the law gives patrons the responsibility for characteristic spirit and the NCCA has to do what it does having regard to that spirit, if stuff is proposed in well-being or any other section contradicting the characteristic spirit, does the patrons programme offer the means to correct that? Are patrons entitled to ensure there is not such contradiction in any other part of the proposed syllabus in the framework?