Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

To follow on from Deputy McDonald's question, there is not only the issue of pupils who may have underlying conditions but there are also parents who are worried and who have serious underlying conditions. It is not clear to me, and I have had quite a few calls about this, what those parents should do. They do not know what to do or whether there is a danger in them sending their children to school. We need support and we need advice for people about what they should do in that situation.

The Department and the Health and Safety Authority, HSA, have agreed a plan to monitor school compliance with Covid-19 restrictions but they do not intend to publish the outcome of those inspections or, it seems, share that information with, for example, the teachers themselves, but only with principals and the boards. This does not seem to me to be acceptable.

2 o’clock

As well as principals, and this extends to all workplaces but certainly in schools, surely there should be health and safety representatives appointed in every school among the school staff who will also receive the information if there are problems and who can represent the staff in terms of any concerns they have about failure to apply public health guidelines, restrictions, distancing and so forth properly in schools.

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