Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I have a minute but in that time I will list some of the very serious issues facing our primary schools. There is a substitute teacher crisis taking place, one the Department of Education has denied and worsened by lack of action. More than 650 primary schools are not covered in the primary schools substitute teacher supply panels.

There are school principals on Twitter looking for substitute teachers at the moment. Primary schools only received a fraction of the CO2 monitors required, relative to the number of classrooms and, scandalously, ASD classrooms were excluded from the calculations. There has been no advice to schools on antigen testing. Air filtration devices are not available unless schools are willing to pay for them. Clean air inequality now exists in our classrooms. On top of all of that, pupils are in the most overcrowded classrooms in the EU. Will the Government revert to the testing and tracing system that was in place in September because what is happening now is not working? Will the Department supply air filtration devices to primary schools as a form of effective mitigation?

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