Calls for education minister to appear before Covid committee ahead of school reopenings

Minister for Education Norma Foley TD arriving for Cabinet at Dublin Castle, Photo: Sam Boal/Rollingnews.ie

There have been calls for the Minister for Education to appear before the Oireachtas Covid-19 committee.

Norma Foley, whose department published a further update to reopening schools on August 14, but did not hold a public press conference, has been called on by Labour's Education Spokesman Aodhán Ó Ríordáin to appear before the committee next week.

Schools are set to reopen across Ireland in the coming weeks, and a heightened sense of anxiety among teachers and parents has been reported, as many feel there is a "lack of leadership," according to Labour.

These tensions were further heightened last week, when Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said that it was 'inevitable' there would be clusters when schools reopened.

The update last week directed teachers to a "series of videos" for further detailed information for cleaning in schools, SNAs, School Bus Escorts and the new Covid-19 Lead Worker Representative.  

Schools were encouraged to contact the dedicated school reopening helpline set up by the Department with any school reopening queries that they have.

Opposition politicians say there are a number of outstanding queries from parents, pupils and teachers that would benefit from hearing from the Minister herself.

"Somebody should be available to answer questions," Mr Ó Ríordáin said."They have two education ministers, a health minister and a number of junior ministers, someone should front up about things like face coverings and transport.

"It's really frustrating, people are turning to me for the answers and I don't have them. "It's more breaking from the convention of 'we're all in this together'."

The chair of the Covid-19 cabinet was asked last week if Ms Foley could attend, however, it has yet to be discussed.

The committee is not sitting this week, but next week will hear from Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, who did not appear when previously asked, when the issue of outbreaks in meat plants was being discussed.

"No one wants to be complaining, we're mindful that schools are often in competition with each other, they have a can-do attitude," Mr Ó Ríordáin added.

"There are too many questions around social distancing, what happens if cluster breaks out? Or if staff or pupils become infected? "We need a level of certainty, part of the problem is that the department has hands-off approach from day to day management of schools, they are funded by the department not run by the department.

"Simon Harris was very comprehensive of where we were in the height of the outbreak, we need the same level of leadership in education.

"This is a once-in-a-generation crisis, people need to be helped through it, these are very easy, simple questions being asked. 

"When it came to big-ticket items like aviation or the economy, the language was so tight, in education it's loose, it's causing extreme anxiety amongst parents, who have all sorts of reasons to be worried if schools don't reopen there's a huge cohort of pupils who won't return, we could lose an entire generation."