Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I will speak in one passage and the Minister can then respond.

Before I begin on my main topics of the reopening of schools and provision, I want to touch briefly on two other issues. The first is external candidates. I have written to the Minister in the past week giving him two very tough examples of students who will likely not get calculated grades. I echo Deputy McAuliffe's point about answers, but we need more than answers. There needs to be an alternative as well. Inevitably, some students will not get a calculated grade, and while for some that might not make a huge difference as their other subjects would allow them to access a third level place, for others that will not be the case. The two students to whom I spoke are good examples of people who are very concerned that they will lose out on a third level place. They will have to wait until next year or they may not get the opportunity at all. These people need an alternative and that needs to be looked at. I urge the Minister to do so because if this is not resolved it would be a gross injustice. It may only affect a small category of students but it is no less gross because of that.

The other issue I wanted to note is special educational places, which I have raised previously with the Minister. There is a severe shortage in Cork, which needs action, but I want to bring the Minister's attention to another letter I wrote to him regarding a school that wants to open a unit and has so far not been successful with the Department. I hope the Minister will give that his attention. There is also an ongoing campaign for an autism-specific school in Dublin 12 which he might consider as well.

I will deal with summer provision first. It is clear from listening to what the Minister has said so far that his ambition now is already quite different from the ambition of last Friday when he suggested doubling the number of students to 20,000. The plan now seems quite different from that and I am not surprised because I raised queries about whether there was any attempt to gauge the capacity or whether there was any capacity planning going on. There did not seem to be any attempt to figure out how many teachers and SNAs were available or how many schools would sign up before any announcement was made.

There are other issues as well. I am aware that a document went out yesterday and I had sight of it. I know that further documentation will be going out but some issues still need to be clarified. I welcome some of what was in yesterday's document, although much of it is the kind of stuff that we discussed when the Minister said he could not communicate with schools at the minute. A lot of that could have been done regardless of the science or the public health advice, such as return to work forms, training, and so on, which did not necessarily depend on the public health advice regarding 1 m or 2 m or anything like that. Much of that could have been done before now, and while it has been done now, there are more issues that need to clarified.

There are issues with insurance as well. Schools are unsure if they will be able to get insurance to run the programme and there is reluctance because of that.

There are also issues with transport and many parents of children with Down's syndrome in mainstream secondary schools were very disappointed about that.

It is a growing cohort. Children transitioning from early years to mainstream primary education make up a sizeable cohort as well. How many children does the Minister predict will take up the summer provision programme?

On the return to schools, the objective is and should be a full return, and this aim is shared by everybody. I caution the Minister and the Department about this. In other jurisdictions, such as Britain, there has been an attempt to have the relevant department or secretary step back while trying to pin the blame on schools, teachers and teaching staff. That cannot happen under any circumstances as everyone has a shared objective of delivering a full return to school. It is the same for teaching staff.

It is unfortunate that special needs assistants feel they have suffered a loss of respect in recent months. The communication on redeployment was significant and there was a feeling that there was a lack of recognition of the fact that they were still working. It was not the case that they were not working; many were still working with children. They are only getting 40% of the rate for the home-based programme of summer provision and this must be worked on. We must begin to show much more respect to special needs assistants.

On the return to school, we were expecting a roadmap last Friday but that has not arrived. When will we get it? We got an outline of something none of us would like to see, which is a child returning to school one day per week, and the Minister effectively ruled that out. That created confusion. When will we see the publication of the full roadmap? I agree with the objective of a full return to school but I am conscious that as well as a desire from parents to have children return to school, there are people who are nervous about the effects on children. This relates to children who might be immunocompromised or who have parents who are immunocompromised. This also applies to school staff. What planning is in place to ensure the education of these children will continue?

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