Ten thousand children are home from school today, having been deemed close contacts. This stop-start approach to education is not working for children or schools. I will provide three examples. I have a constituent who was working from home until recently but who was refused that option when her son was deemed a close contact. Instead, she had to take annual leave to stay at home with her child, who received a negative test. I have another constituent whose daughter tested positive for Covid in February and is out of school today because her classmate tested positive.

In one school in my constituency, there were five positive cases spread across four classrooms, with siblings in additional classrooms, thus completely maximising the disruption. I understand we need protocols in place for schools and that children and their safety needs to be put to the fore, but the requirement on a student to restrict his or her movement for ten days and to then test negative before returning to the classroom only to be told again that he or she is a close contact and, thus, has to go through that cycle again causes too much disruption. Can we expect a change in these regulations?

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. It is on the back of the significant progress we have made with Covid and the reduced infection levels that the CMO has provided updated advice to my colleague, the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly. The Minister is now engaging with the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, who, in turn, is consulting the education partners in regard to this issue. The Government will make its decision and announcement in regard to any changes in due course.

I thank the Minister and all Deputies who submitted questions for adhering to the timeline. By way of information, I have decided that in future I will not select Deputies who do not adhere to the one-minute allocation because it is not fair to their colleagues who are coming after them.