Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and thank her for being here for this important debate. I am covering for Senator Dolan, who could not be here today, but I acknowledge her support for what this Bill is trying to do. I thank the Senators for putting this Bill forward, including Senator Mullen, and for outlining quite well what this entails. An awful lot of it is common sense.

In schools in recent years there has been so much pressure on staff and on principals in particular. There have been worries with managing staff, parents and kids and they have had an awful lot on their plates. This is one other element where they would have genuine concerns if something happened. If we are getting to a point, as Senator Mullen said, where kids are being told not to play chase when they are seven, eight or nine years old, then we are getting to the stage of being ridiculous. Senator Mullen said it well when he said this is about prudent parents. I would argue that even the most prudent of parents would agree that supervision of their children would be better in school than it would be in their backyards. If there is an element of trust between parents and principals in schools, then we must recognise that supervision is of high importance for schools but accidents just happen. I broke my hand while playing in school, and I just went straight to hospital and there was no consideration of who was at fault, what we should have done or anything like that. It just happens and that is the nature of being a child.

It is important we discuss this. As Senator O'Loughlin has said, the Attorney General has asked for more time to review this, and that is probably the right thing to do. It is hard to argue with anything that has been said from the opposite side, however. When it comes to normal primary schools, a bit of common sense is all that is needed. People will get hurt, they will fall and they will break arms. Kids will play with each other and hurt each other. Principals are working on other issues well beyond the time schools close, and they should not have to worry about preparing for court cases with parents of children who break their hands. We should not be getting to that stage and it is a waste of time for the courts to be dealing with it. It is good to see that those cases Senator Mullen outlined showed that common-sense approach.

I will pick up on what Senator O'Loughlin said about new schools. We have a new primary school in Cahir, which is one of the biggest in the country. It is a giant school where the boys' and girls' schools have come together to build a new school which is being opened next month by the Taoiseach. It is an incredible school, and the Minister of State will know it because she was helpful in funding it when we had challenges at the start of this term. They have been waiting 16 years for this school to be built. This school is open to the public and for groups to use outside of school hours, which is important. A caretaker could be there and you could have keys to go into the school or the main hall but the rest of the school is closed completely, so it is almost like you are just going into the hall. The way these schools are built now is dramatically different from back in the day. That utilisation Senator O'Loughlin was talking about can be much more, certainly in rural Ireland.I acknowledge the work Senator Mullen and others have put into the Bill. We certainly should look at the proposals it contains to take some unnecessary pressure off principals and school staff.