School Staff Dail Éireann — 2021-11-23 ============================================================ Norma Foley (FF), Kerry To clarify with regard to substitution, a whole myriad of measures are being made available to schools, not one single measure. In terms of special education specifically, it is very important that children who need to avail of particular supports because they have particular special educational challenges should receive that support at the time they are scheduled to receive it. I do not think it is helpful to pit one group of students against another. It is important that, as the need arises and as the students are timetabled for special educational support, they should receive it at that time. On contact tracing, I want to be very clear. The Deputy referred to public health, which continues to be available to schools currently and in the future in terms of any particular issues that might arise in schools. I have outlined previously what the new mechanisms will be, bearing in mind that this is the expert recommendation of the CMO and of public health, which have supported the running of our schools right from the very beginning and the onset of this pandemic. --- 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/2021-11-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:51+00:00 Sitting date: 2021-11-23