I sent a message to the Taoiseach and the Minister for Education this morning relating to a second-level school in Donaghmede that Deputy Duncan Smith and I visited this morning. The conditions in which the children and staff are working are quite deplorable. I ask the Government to address the issue as soon as it possibly can.

I want to raise the issue of the return to school. In our view, there are thousands of children out of school unnecessarily. There are asymptomatic children being kept out of school for 14 days. Is the Tánaiste engaging with the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, to re-evaluate the system as it currently stands because the public health teams are not engaging with schools as they did prior to the summer? As the Tánaiste will be aware, the public health team used to connect with the school and make a determination on what should happen next in the case of a Covid case. Now we have a situation where the public health teams are not engaging as well. Principals are left two, three, four or five days without any communication and having to make their own determination.

Thank you, Deputy.

Now we have upwards of 14,000 children out of the system and that will only get worse.

We are overtime. I call the Tánaiste to reply.

We are trying to find solutions to this. Perhaps we can find a mechanism to ensure it does not get worse.

If the Deputy continues, he is eating into other people's time. I am not personalising. There is up to one minute so that each Deputy can get in.

I hope it will not get worse. The return to schools has been successful - much more successful than many of the doomsayers said it would be - and cases are now stable or falling. Hopefully, it will get better and not worse, but we cannot assume that. We cannot take anything for granted in that regard.

I appreciate that children missing school is causing enormous disruption. Their parents then having to stay at home to look after them is causing disruption for them and at workplace level as well. In our engagements with NPHET and the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, HPSC, we will be asking for updated advice on this. They are looking at the issue of masks as well at present, and we would welcome that.

The advice at present is that a person who is a close contact and is fully vaccinated does not need to restrict his or her movements or isolate unless he or she has symptoms, but a person who is not vaccinated needs to do so. Of course, children under 12 do not have the opportunity to be vaccinated and therein lies the difficulty. We are consulting NPHET and the HPSC on the best way forward, but I ask the Deputy to-----

Go raibh maith agat.

-----bear in mind that we have avoided huge numbers of outbreaks in schools and we do not want that to happen either.

We are over time. I am moving on.