Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have previously raised with the Taoiseach the urgent need for remote education for children who live with a medically vulnerable person. Our offices have received correspondence from distraught parents with very serious medical conditions who are terrified of their children bringing home Covid-19. Where the threat to people's health is so serious that families decide to keep their children at home, parents are left with no option but to register with Tusla for homeschooling. This is not the route they wish to take, nor are they equipped to deliver it. Tusla figures show that 1,000 families applied to homeschool their children in August and September this year, an increase of approximately 500% on the same period last year.

The Department of Education provides an entitlement for children with very high-risk medical conditions to receive remote tuition, yet the children of parents with the same very high-risk conditions have been left in a most precarious position by the Government. The Taoiseach gave a commitment to investigate this matter when I last raised it with him, and I am disappointed with his response. Reiterating public health guidelines to these people on wearing masks and hand washing, valuable as they are, is not a constructive engagement on such a serious matter. These families are greatly impacted as, for them, it is a matter of life and death. The Government has not engaged with the core issue and, as a result, Tusla is now dealing with a backlog of hundreds of applications which have to be screened. The answer to this is that the Minister for Education should instruct her officials to issue a circular, develop that in conjunction with the HSE and enable schools to provide remote teaching for these pupils.

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