Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I am pointing out that it is not an easy decision. There are big decisions to be taken on Church of Ireland schools and they also need a year. They need to be given the time to start the conversation to come up with a sustainable plan. It was not fair to apply the new retention numbers from last September - next September would be much more reasonable. I do not give out about the retention numbers, but simply ask for more time.

Leenane where the movie The Field was filmed is a beautiful village in Connemara and its school has 18 pupils. It needs time to plan and a serious conversation with the community is ongoing. That community is doing what it can to ensure it holds on to that village school. It is hard to imagine Leenane without a school. Tooreen national school is a four-teacher school with 78 pupils and is about to be reduced to three teachers. The community has the three and four year olds who were advised to stay at home. If they had gone to school it could have kept its fourth teacher but they did not know it would be an issue because of the retrospection.

Will the Minister honour good practice and best practice where it exists? Senator Jim D'Arcy asked not to split the learning support and the resource teacher where it is working well.