Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

There seems to be a push to get all the kids back to school and it is understandable that people want that. It was said in yesterday's Irish Independent that it has figures that show that the cohort of people next most susceptible to Covid during the third wave are young people, from ages 16 to 18, and so reopening the schools has huge implications. Has the Government ensured that the work was done to make our schools safe? I mention the size of the classrooms. Have we acquired more spaces so that children and young people can be spaced out further away from each other? Have we employed more teachers so that we can guarantee that the class sizes are smaller? Have we dealt with the question of ventilation in the classroom? We are told that 80% of our schools have poor ventilation and we have had nine months or, arguably, a whole year to do this work. How much of it has been done?

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