Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I have two questions, the first of which flows from what Deputy Boyd Barrett was saying. For parents, students and teachers, there is a significant desire to have schools fully reopened in September. People know that children's education and development are being damaged, as is their emotional well-being. They need to be back in school, learning, socialising and processing the times that we have been through. There has been a worrying attempt to pit students and parents against teachers and to turn parents against teachers' unions, which are rightly seeking to ensure that the reopening of schools is done safely. The real issue is the attempt to reopen schools cheaply, putting children, teachers, their families and the wider community in danger. The Minister referred to the case of Denmark where schools opened two months ago with a strict 2 m limit and class sizes of ten students.

They have taken over sports halls and other spaces to give the physical space to allow reopening to be safe. That is what we need to do here, that is what the science demands, and that is the logic. We have to do that, and that means getting the space but also the staff. It does not mean jamming 30 or more students into cramped classrooms, piling more responsibilities onto overworked teachers, calling them pods, bubbles or whatever, and expecting that is going to keep the virus away.

This is our chance to bring down class sizes, improve education and give children the extra support they need. Bring in the thousands of substitute teachers and employ them immediately, and employ more SNAs. We need to do that now in the context of the coronavirus and we need to do it into the future in respect of improving our education system. I would like the Minister to answer that question now, and then I will come back in.

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