Scéimeanna Oideachais
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-11
============================================================

Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

The project is a step in the right direction. The previous Minister in the Department, the Minister, Deputy Norma Foley, moved the initiative on. It is a clear indication of the importance of small schools in communities. We have visited a number of schools over the past eight or nine months. Some city schools are small too, for different reasons.
On having an administrator within the cluster, there is huge collaboration within the schools that are part of the cluster. They can benefit from co-operation, not just in regard to teaching but also in understanding the challenges. We are very committed to evaluating the project and understanding how we can best support schools in the future. For principals who have multiple classes in small schools, having administrative days and a guarantee that the same teacher will come in every week are also hugely important.

---

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/2025-12-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-11