Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I also commend my colleague, Deputy Ó Laoghaire, on bringing this motion before the House. Let us be honest: it is one of the most pressing issues at present. Many parents have now faced over 137 days since the schools were closed and they have waited and waited for the Government's announcement on the reopening of schools. Being a mother of five children, I know from experience how difficult it can be to homeschool children while trying to keep some bit of normality in our day-to-day lives. I take this opportunity to commend all parents, in particular lone parents, who have been going through this very strange situation over the past four months, especially as their eager children have sought answers that the parents just did not have.

I welcome the announcement from the Government last night on the roadmap to reopening schools, and I am sure it will be warmly welcomed by parents and pupils alike, but let us be straight: this roadmap is late. We in Sinn Féin have been calling for the roadmap for some time, but here we are, just four weeks out from schools reopening, and we get this announcement only now. This timeline does not allow schools enough time to get capital projects under way and completed in time. For example, Clonmoney national school, in Newmarket on Fergus, County Clare, has been looking for a new extension for some time, but this project and many others seem to be caught up in a pile of red tape. If this has been the case all along with building works, I cannot see how this will change in the next four weeks.

There is also a lack of commitment to special education hours for schools when they reopen. One group in our society that has been severely impacted by Covid is our people with disabilities. For them we need to ensure that when schools reopen there are more resource hours coupled with smaller class sizes. These are essential, first, to reopen schools safely and, second, to ensure that pupils and teachers can effectively pick up where they left off back in March. Ireland is way above the EU average when it comes to class sizes, and that is simply not good enough.

I wish to mention the difficult situation faced by pupils who now have to transition from primary school and secondary school. I wish them all the very best.

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