Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and congratulate her on the work she has done to date and on guiding the ship through incredibly stormy waters. She has done a fantastic job. I thank her and congratulate her on that.

I take this opportunity to thank the teachers and principals who have put in enormous effort and work in recent months in preparing their schools for the return of students. I visited the national school in Inishannon some weeks before the reopening. The thought-processes, effort and different ways to figure out how they could bring back children in a safe manner were inspiring. These professionals are there to educate. That is their passion and first priority. I thank them for that.

I thank parents as well. They have had to manage considerable anxiety, worry and excitement as well as their own anxiety. They have been incredibly understanding for the most part.

I wish good luck to all those students who are still returning to school in a phased manner. I have many nieces and nephews who are returning to school. They are absolutely over the moon to be going back to school. I take this opportunity to wish them the best of luck.

Yet, as we know, with all these processes involved in dealing with the pandemic and this situation, there will always be some issues. I want to take this opportunity to highlight some of these issues with the Minister. She might look at these individual issues and come back to me on them.

The issue of school transport will crop up. There are two sides to this. On the one side, we have situations where children are unable to avail of tickets or school transport.

On the other side, we hear stories of situations where buses are at full capacity and there are safety concerns among parents. To give an example from Glengarriff, not far over the border from the Minister's county, a family have four children, one of whom is attending primary school and has a ticket. However, of the three children attending secondary school, only one of them has been given a ticket and the other two have not qualified. I am trying to get my head around this. The Minister knows Glengarriff is not far from Bantry, which is the secondary school they would attend, but these two children are being told they should attend school in Kenmare, over the border in the Minister's beautiful county of Kerry. It is an anomaly and these anomalies exist, but we need a system whereby we see fewer of these situations. I would like the Minister to take that case on board and look into it as similar situations are happening in Drimoleague and other parts of the constituency.

On the other side of the scale, there is a situation in Belgooly, close to Kinsale, where parents are very concerned because the bus is at its full capacity of 57 students, which flies in the face of what we are trying to do in terms of bringing children back to school safely. It may be that all of the provisions are being adhered to but, again, it is a concern. If an extra bus was provided in that area, it would allay many of those concerns and would be much safer.

There are issues in two local schools in my constituency. Scoil Bhríde in Ballydehob is a lovely national school but it is in a situation where there are three classes in the same classroom, with 28 students and one teacher, and it is appealing for an extra teacher so children can return in much safer numbers. A case of which the Minister is already aware, and which she has said she will look into, is that of Millie McCarthy, a seven year old child with Down’s syndrome. Unfortunately, she cannot attend school with her classmates because the class is already well over capacity at 34 students. Again, for me, the solution is the provision of an extra teacher for that school so the class can be split and Millie, who has underlying health conditions but is desperate to return to school, can return safely. That is the plea I am making.

I thank the Minister again for the incredible job she is doing.

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