Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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486. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the budgetary analysis being carried out to plan for long Covid-19 impacts in her Department and each State agency under the remit of her Department in tabular form. [4483/21]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Covid-19 has impacted significantly on all elements of our education system. Recognising that impact, this Government, in July 2020, approved a significant financial package to support the Roadmap for the Full Return to School for the 2020/2021 school year. These supports enabled schools to successfully reopen last August/September and helped sustain that reopening until mid-December. Government financial support has continued into 2021 with a significant allocation included in the Revised Estimates for my Department.

The funding package approved by the Government for 2020/2021 was a comprehensive one that now amounts to €639 million that is being used to provide the necessary supports and guidance for primary and post-primary schools to operate for the current 2020/21 school year. This funding was allocated as €331 million in 2020 and €308 million in 2021.

The range of supports being made available to schools under the package has included additional financial supports to provide for extra staffing, management supports, enhanced cleaning, hand hygiene and personal protective equipment costs under the Covid-19 response plans. Funding is also included for the continuation of additional educational psychological services to provide for well-being supports for students and for additional supports for the transport of pupils via the school transport scheme.

The Government also approved a significant capital package of minor works grants for primary and post-primary schools and an ICT grant to all schools to support them in preparing their buildings and classrooms for reopening and to underpin the delivery of education to our school students.

Conscious of the fact that the longer term position in regard to Covid remained uncertain, the Government, when formulating the 2021 Estimates, agreed to set aside a central contingency fund for all departments and related aegis bodies to be managed by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. This contingency fund will be available to meet Covid-19 costs that will arise across the education sector in the future.