I intend to be brief. This is a very welcome Bill that has provoked the appropriate conversation and debate on the urgency required when we have a potential transition of Government. Urgency is what has been absent, which has probably motivated the Bill. At the very beginning of the Thirty-second Dáil and Thirty-third Dáil, there was an absence of urgency that continued for several months. There was posturing, political game-playing and people making political statements to take shots at their rivals and tell us al…

We are discussing the reopening of our schools and I would imagine that, all over the country, educators are listening in to what we have to say. Not only that, they will also be looking at where it is we are saying it. I want to direct the point not necessarily at the Minister, who has no control over this, but more at the political establishment itself. We are speaking here in an auditorium with several hundred spare seats and with a distance of 20 m or 30 m between us. All over the country, there are teachers te…

I welcome the Minister of State and congratulate her on her appointment. I do not in any way underestimate the scale of the task she faces and I wish her well in her efforts in this vitally important area. Her success is in everybody's interests. The meetings of the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response from which I and other attendees have got the most satisfaction have been those pertaining to education, particularly where the witnesses were from interest groups which work with young people who have undergone th…

It is imperative that we continue to sit, particularly on the subject of the reopening of schools.

Could I use my time to ask a question, receive an answer, ask another question and receive another answer?

Brilliant. I thank the Minister for taking the time to speak to us this evening. I want to ask her about recommendation 5 of the framework to reopen schools. I will read it out just so she knows what I am referring to. It states, "For those larger classes which remain difficult to accommodate consider a live streaming of that class to another room or area in the school." I have contacted a number of schools both in my own constituency and around Dublin to ask them about these overflow classrooms and I have been met…

I thank the Minister. I did not really get an answer on Portakabins but I will move on to the issue of teacher recruitment.

That is okay because I do not have that much time. The 1,000 new teachers that were allocated for secondary schools are very welcome. We have 723 secondary schools in this country. Does the Minister believe that will be enough if there is a second wave? I will also touch on the recruitment process for those 1,000 teachers. There is currently no advertisement related to the recruitment of these new teachers. When will the advertisement happen for the recruitment of these teachers? The Minister will be aware there is…

I will touch on the lead worker representative role, an especially interesting position being catered for in the roadmap. I imagine it is quite a difficult position. Will the Minister tell us about this role, the person in charge of all the Covid-related activities and precautions in a school? How will this person be identified? My understanding is he or she can be any member of the school faculty. The person has to be elected by consensus within the school. There is no financial incentive for a person taking on th…

We will agree to disagree there. I have only a short amount of time left so I will ask a very quick question. This year's leaving certificate cohort will arrive back in school on 7 September. The Minister knows from being in schools that when the leaving certificate results come out, all these students come back, some in a state of emotional distress and some seeking extra guidance and support. Will those students who get their results on 7 September be allowed back into their schools to talk to their teachers and …

This question pertains to the prevalence of poverty in this country, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Has the Minister heard the calls from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which has acknowledged that the experience of the 700,000 people living in poverty has been compounded by the pandemic? It has asked for a special task force to be set up to examine poverty and inequality. Is the Minister willing to accept those points?

This is a very specific matter regarding how we will confront the fact that poverty has been exacerbated during the pandemic. Poverty has a corrosive impact on people in every walk of life. We have had roadmaps but they have consistently missed their targets over the past ten years. What is being asked for by groups such as the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and other social justice groups is for special attention to be placed on matters of poverty and inequality. One group I am thinking of is that comprising one-p…

I want to confront the old trope that the best way of getting people out of poverty is to get them into work. The Minister should tell that to the 160,000 people who were working and still experiencing poverty before the pandemic. Despite being in work, they still very much experienced poverty. The best way to get people out of poverty is to provide an appropriate social safety net so that when they struggle, the State will step in and support them. The Minister indicated several times that some professions will si…

I acknowledge that there is much merit in this Bill and short of a couple of important points I would like to support it. When I came into this Chamber in February, I wanted to be somebody who would be constructive in my engagement, who would try to find merit and who would try to work collaboratively and not simply oppose a Bill just because it came from somebody who had different beliefs about the world from mine. However, there are significant parts of the Bill that would make it enormously difficult for me to s…

I will speak again then.

A Chathaoirligh, on a point of order-----

I remind colleagues that if we do not have our amendments discussed before 10 p.m., they will all fall. I have actual amendments I would like us to vote on before then. If we could get to the amendments that we could vote on, that would be great.

All the words that need to be spoken on this issue have been said. It is high time that we put it to a vote and see whether people will turn their rhetoric into action that will make a difference in people's lives. I support the amendment tabled by People Before Profit and Sinn Féin which aims to remove lines 33 to 38 of page 8, which is the proposed section 68L(1)(g). I ask that this be put to a vote.

The Chair should call the vote.

I commend Deputy Ó Laoghaire on bringing forward the motion. It is appropriate and the right time for us to have a discussion about classroom sizes. One of the interesting aspects of having been a local authority representative and coming from that background into the Dáil Chamber is that when a motion is on the clár for a local authority, it is taken very seriously. It is necessary to know what will be said regarding the actions that will ensue if the motion passes and there is a suggestion that the implications o…