Mark Wall (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will not be taking the full five minutes. I welcome the Minister and thank her for holding a Zoom meeting for Oireachtas Members from County Kildare while we were in lockdown. All the Members appreciated the time she took from a very busy schedule to answer a lot of questions for parents and students alike, so I thank her very much for that.

I thank also the entire school community for the way they have handled the reopening. It is my experience that from principals to teachers, SNAs, school secretaries, caretakers and of course pupils, co-operation has been excellent. Where issues have arisen they have been dealt with speedily and professionally.

I raise, as others have done, the issue of the leaving certificate class of 2021. They are now back at school, having lost more than five months of direct teaching. Will the Minister confirm whether her Department has set up any ways of dealing with these young students as they begin their final year of secondary school? Has the curriculum they will sit changed in any way to reflect the unprecedented times they will face? I have been contacted by a large number of students from this cohort and by their parents, and indeed my own child is now in this leaving certificate class. There is a lot of worry among the school population as well about what may happen if schools are forced to close again because of the pandemic. The Minister might reassure everyone in this year that should this happen, her Department has a plan for it and will put it in place, as well as a plan to deal with the leaving certificate exam of 2021.

On school transport, I am getting a lot of queries about private bus drivers retiring after some great years of service. I appreciate that they are private services but they play a vital part in supporting school transport overall. This is causing a lot of problems with replacing school runs, especially in the rural communities I come from. Perhaps this is something the Minister and her Department can investigate. As part of the topic of school transport, I raise the issue of those who are over 70 and cannot continue working as bus drivers. Given the need to employ additional bus drivers, surely we are losing out on a large pool of capable people who could solve many of the problems that are being experienced. These same drivers are continuing to work, fully insured, with private operators and I ask the Minister to urge her Department to review this important resource of more than capable people.

I encourage the Minister and her Department to proceed with much-needed construction plans for schools in the area where I live. These schools include St. Paul's in Monasterevin, which is hoped to go into construction by the end of the year and is a school that the community of Monasterevin is waiting more than 15 years for; the provision of a new school at the Curragh, County Kildare, where I understand the Minister and her Department have identified a site; and not forgetting Coláiste Íosagáin in Portarlington in respect of which I am told the Minister has received a stage 1 report.