Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I appreciate and acknowledge every day that more is being asked within our schools. That is of all staff, whether it is the teaching staff, school secretary, caretaker, our SNAs and obviously our school leadership and boards of management, to whom we owe a huge debt of gratitude. In terms of supporting school leadership and the concept of distributed leadership, we have made significant progress. In 2022, as I said, under sectoral bargaining, 1,450 posts of responsibility were made available to primary and special schools. Last year in securing budget for 2024, we made provision for 1,000 posts of responsibility and indeed gave sufficient notification to schools that those posts could be advertised early in the year so those taking them up could be in place for September rather than the delay that has happened previously with interviews and people taking up the posts. I am very conscious of it. We have made progress. I do not at all say that we do not need to make more but we will work on it.

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