Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to raise this issue and the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, for taking it. It is an issue of health and safety relating to one of the most vulnerable groups in our society, namely, children. I raise it following the discussions and dialogue I had with parents and teachers in the aftermath of the storm last February that wreaked so much havoc in different parts of the country. I take this opportunity to compliment all of those working in local authority emergency services and elsewhere who came to people's aid at that time. In the intervening period, we have all had a chance to consider what exactly happened on 12 February.

My specific concern relates to the process of planning for emergencies, particularly in respect of vulnerable cohorts such as children attending school. My understanding is that the national meteorological service would have known 24 hours in advance that Storm Darwin, a full-blown hurricane, was due to hit the west coast. For some reason, however, a decision was either taken or not taken which led to schools opening that morning, thereby putting children, parents and staff at an absolutely inordinate risk. In some cases, at the height of the storm, text messages were being sent out by schools to parents asking them to collect their children. There clearly was no joined-up plan for how vulnerable groups like children would be protected in these types of circumstances.

On 27 May, in response to a question from me, the Minister, Deputy Quinn, pointed to the Department's circular PBU04/04 as providing guidance to schools on this issue. Unfortunately, that circular offers no level of comfort to school managers, teachers or principals, offering little advice other than that schools should provide their details to the local authority. That is not really much good in the situation we saw on 12 February, where debris of every description was flying through the air, third level colleges were sending text messages to their students and staff to say that they were going into lock-down, and staff and principals of schools, particularly primary schools, were left to their own devices to figure out what they should do.

What is required is a single protocol for all schools. One of the first issues to be established is whether schools should open at all when a status red weather warning is issued and, if not, how that message can be communicated in a timely and effective manner. Leaving schools to their own devices in this type of situation is not good enough. There is anecdotal evidence of gates being taken off their piers and sent hurling through the air in the direction of parents collecting their children from school and of trees falling on cars. How much of this was avoidable? Although a man did lose his life while clearing up in the immediate aftermath of the storm, it was very fortunate that nobody died on the day itself. Indeed, based on what we saw unfolding on our television screens, it is a miracle there was not widespread loss of life and injury.

Leaving it to the devices of individual schools, managers, teachers and parents to decide whether or not it is safe to go out on an open road in the height of a hurricane to collect children is simply not good enough. We must have stricter protocols in place and the Department should take the lead in their introduction.

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The particular issue raised by the Deputy in the event of a status red severe weather warning code is a matter of wider application as it is equally applicable to the community in general. The Government task force on emergency planning, in which my Department participates, co-ordinates the overall response to such events. Departmental officials are currently engaging with the task force on this specific issue with a view to informing future practice. Officials from the Department are also in consultation with the office of emergency planning of the Department of Defence to enable such protocols to be developed. They are due to meet shortly with the management bodies for the primary and post-primary sector to review the issues and identify which measures should be put in place.

The Department is aware that different weather events which warrant a red alert may have different implications for schools.

In particular, a weather event caused by severe wind, as experienced in January and February this year, presents particular issues in the potential damage it may cause and in the sudden and localised nature of such an event. The red alert arising from a wind event will be taken into account in any protocols which may be devised.

Currently, the lead agencies in regard to determining the appropriate emergency response in any region where there is an extreme weather event or other critical incident are the local authorities and blue light services. In that context, the Department of Education and Skills has brought to the attention of all schools departmental circular PBU 04/04, entitled contingency planning in the context of a national emergency. In particular, this circular requires schools to ensure up-to-date contact details are provided to the local authority.

The Department, as a member of the national co-ordinating committee, acts a conduit for information between the national authorities and the wider education sector at the time of such events. The Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government has the responsibility for leading the response to weather related emergencies. The Department of Transport plays a major supporting role as transport is one of the main sectors affected by severe weather.

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister for his reply. The Department of Education and Skills has a very important role in emergency planning. Some 24 hours before this hurricane hit the country, we had information at our disposal and yet we allowed schools to open the following morning and children from as young as five years of age were put into a lethal environment, which was totally unnecessary. Who in the meteorological service decided not to relay this information so that schools could be told to close? What have we learned from that to ensure it will not happen again? That is the crux of the issue.

I appreciate there is a circular but no county manager will send out a notification to close a school. There needs to be very clear protocols in place in the Department which can be given to school managers and principals telling them exactly what they should do. For instance, is it safe to ask parents by text message to collect their child in the middle of a hurricane, putting them at risk by asking them to travel on roads on which they do not know what kind of debris they will find? The child may well be safer left at school.

Luckily we are not in the throes of winter but this issue needs to be taken much more seriously. The Minister knows as well as I do that teaching principals in rural areas, which were the areas worst affected by this, have a million other things on their minds, but if they got a text message from a centralised service the night before telling them to close their schools the next day due to a red warning alert, it would be much more effective than a circular asking them to forward their details to the county manager who probably has been moved and has not taken down their names in the first place.

This is a very serious issue. We put children, their parents, their teachers and their minders at unnecessary risk when we knew 24 hours beforehand that there was a red alert and that a hurricane was going to hit the west coast. As a State, we did nothing about it. Luckily nobody was killed but will we be able to say that in the future? We need proper and robust protocols in place to ensure we are not putting vulnerable people at unnecessary risk.

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this matter because I recall very acutely the events which took place. Our information systems are out of balance with each other and the Deputy's timely raising of this matter is helpful. We have much better long-term weather forecasts and the red alert system, which is relatively new, is certainly much more advanced than anything we had in the past ten to 15 years. However, we have not upgraded the system in terms of school decision-making and I will give the Deputy a particular example. I spoke to a principal in Kerry whose small school, although not that small, was severely damaged in that the roof came off part of it. In fairness to her, whose name I will not mention, she telephoned her diocesan education secretary to find out who was to make the decision or what was the decision, but quite frankly, people did not necessarily know.

We have a public private division in our education system in that the public side of it, controlled from this House, raises the money, sets the curriculum and so on, while the private side is the patron side. The main patron is the Roman Catholic Church which is responsible for 93% of all the primary schools in the country. Perhaps what the Deputy has alerted me to is to have a proper discussion with the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association to put protocols in place because it is not the function of the Department to instruct a school to close for whatever reason, although in this instance it was adverse weather.

Principals do not necessarily want to take that unilateral decision and they certainly need guidance. That is something which could be constructively raised with the new general secretary of the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association, Monsignor Tom Deenihan, to see what should happen. If the weather is bad, the CPSMA should make a decision and contact the principals and the boards of management to give principals the authority to notify parents in sufficient time that it is not safe to bring their children to school.