School Attendance Dail Éireann — 2020-09-08 ============================================================ Denis Naughten (IND), Roscommon-Galway Every year, more than 700 families are threatened with prosecution because their son or daughter has failed to attend school for well in excess of 20 days with no legitimate reason and where these parents have declined support and are unwilling to co-operate with the education welfare officer. However, after numerous contacts, one in four of these families are actually prosecuted. I question whether court, or the threat of court action, is the most appropriate way to deal with these families. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2020-09-08/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:32+00:00 Sitting date: 2020-09-08