Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I do not blame the Labour Party for not showing up for this session. We are here to discuss Estimates but what we have before us is no reflection of what schools will look like when they open up in September. I welcome the Minister to her new role and wish her the best in that regard. However, I cannot understand why we are discussing Estimates that have no bearing on what education will look like in September. I do not accept that we might have the budget in a few weeks or that it could not have been presented as part of this particular Estimate. An interesting aspect of having a multitude of spokesperson roles is that one gets to see how other Departments behave. For example, the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht provided its Estimates last week and included some additional Estimates for what the arts sector would look like over the next few months. I cannot for the life of me understand why that could not have been done for this set of Estimates as well. There are six weeks left until schools reopen and a number of questions remain to be answered. In the absence of any real information I will continue to do my job by asking questions and hopefully I will get some answers to them.

I hope the Minister watched some sessions of the Covid committee because we have had some fascinating presentations on education over the last few weeks. The three teachers' unions, parents' associations from both primary and post-primary level and school principals all came before the committee and all their themes were fairly similar. They talked about resources, an absence of guidelines and how low morale currently is for both students and teachers. I will touch on some of those issues.

No resource will be more fundamental in September than staff, taking teachers into account. Does the Minister expect to have a larger panel of substitute teachers ready to step in all over the country should teacher absenteeism increase? Teachers may have to withdraw themselves from schools because of a re-emergence of the virus or for a plethora of other reasons that might result in absenteeism. Will we have more substitute teacher panels ready to go?

I know the Minister places huge value on SNAs because I heard her talk about them several times before she became Minister. SNAs are and always have been hugely important but they will be even more so in the age of Covid-19 due to all the difficulties that will entail for students with special educational needs. Does the Minister anticipate hiring more SNA staff? Doing so will create a challenge with Garda vetting, which is very necessary. While teachers are vetted by the Teaching Council, it is up to schools to vet each individual SNA. If we reopen schools in the autumn and some SNAs who work very closely with students have to withdraw themselves from the school because of proximity to the virus, will there be other SNAs ready to step in? Who is going to take on the responsibility of Garda vetting those SNAs? The schools cannot take that on because they would be overburdened. It would be better if we had a substitute panel of SNAs who could go to a multitude of different schools.

Cleaning staff are going to be absolutely essential. Most of the schools I have worked in are allocated only two hours of cleaning staff a day. That will not be acceptable. Will schools have the money in their bank accounts in mid-August to hire more cleaning staff? That is absolutely essential. Currently, staff do their jobs and the schools apply to the Department for funding but we are going to have to turn that on its head. Is that going to happen?

One of the school principals who spoke to the Covid committee talked about the need for Covid leaders in each school who understand the roles and responsibilities regarding social distancing and other measures. Who will be the Covid leaders in schools? Will it be the deputy principals and if so, can we increase their hours? Will it be teachers? That would create its own issues. Will it be other non-teaching staff?

Infrastructural changes are going to be massively important in schools. We already have one of the largest class sizes in Europe with a pupil-teacher ratio of 26:1. That was already a problem for students but in the age of Covid-19 it is actually going to impact their health. What sort of investment in infrastructural changes does the Minister envision and how much will that cost? It was hugely disappointing that the Minister's first big announcement was of investment in a school in her own area. While I am happy for the students in Dromclough national school, there are 405 other schools around the country in similar need of emergency investment. I ask that we continue that investment in Kerry while bringing it to the rest of the country as well.

The tech void is already a problem but it will be a substantial one if we have to withdraw students from school again, given the issues students had with laptops and access to data. I ask the Minister to address that and how much she is going to invest in it.

Perhaps the Minister will answer those questions and then I will come back in with some more.

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