Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister's words of encouragement. I agree wholeheartedly with everything she is saying in respect of responsibilities and all of the demands that are now put on the entire school management from top to bottom in national schools, especially in today's world. I am aware of two schools in particular where there are problems. I will send the Minister a note on them separately rather than raising them here. I am coming across the situation more and more that, if a school needs an extension, emergency works or anything like that, there is a massive onus on the school in terms of the responsibility for preparing the reports, engaging and paying consultants and having to know how the whole process of procurement, project management, design and so on work. That in itself is a speciality, might I say. It is important that we support the schools and boards of management in every way we can to make sure education is free in every sense of the word.

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