Richard Boyd Barrett
Dún Laoghaire · People Before Profit-Solidarity · Ireland
“It is absolutely incredible that about 50% to 57% of all professional artists in this country live on or below the poverty line - three times the level of poverty in Irish society generally.”
“On a global level, the consumption of electricity by data centres is due to go up elevenfold by 2030. They are hoovering up the water resources and electricity resources of the planet. There will not be much human creativity, art or music if we have no water and no energy. That is what is going on with these people.”
“St. Joseph's Centre in Shankill is the largest care home dedicated solely to dementia care in the country. SIPTU members feel compelled to take industrial action tomorrow because of the failure of St. John of God's to recognise the work and duties that they do.”
“These people actually want to replace human beings and human creativity with AI. That would literally be the road to disaster for humanity. Some people think about AI as if it is cutting edge and the most advanced thing possible, but AI is like the Neanderthal.”
“Against that background, we are seeing these billionaires who run AI looking to steal en masse all of the artistic and creative output of humanity and to profit from it. The artists rightly are asking what the Government is going to do to prevent them making a bad situation for most artists and performers even worse.”
“I thank Deputy Ó Snodaigh for bringing this motion forward. As Deputy Paul Murphy indicated, People Before Profit is very happy to support and commend all the artists, organisations, musicians and so on who are campaigning to bring this forward.”
The complete record
Every one of 1,055 lines we hold for Richard Boyd Barrett, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 1 of 22.
“It is not real innovation; it is just mixing around existing memories. That was why the Neanderthal went extinct. What will happen if we leave creativity and the future of human society to AI? I am even beginning to wonder about people generating parliamentary questions using AI. How soon before these parliamentary questions are answered using AI? AI will be asking the questions and AI will be answering them. That is where we are going. We have to stop. The Government should not buy this nonsense. AI may have some uses if it is subordinate to, in this case, what the artists, musicians and their representatives want. If we want a solution to this problem, we should talk to the people in the Gallery.”
“These people actually want to replace human beings and human creativity with AI. That would literally be the road to disaster for humanity. Some people think about AI as if it is cutting edge and the most advanced thing possible, but AI is like the Neanderthal. The Neanderthal had a bigger brain than the human being but it went extinct because its huge brain was mainly dealing with memory and sensory processing and was not able to do the higher functions that the human brain does. What makes us unique, and what made the human being adapt successfully while the Neanderthal died out, is our creative capacity. I refer to our capacity to imagine things that do not exist and not just to scrape memory. The problem with scraping memory is that it does not involve developing something new.”
“On a global level, the consumption of electricity by data centres is due to go up elevenfold by 2030. They are hoovering up the water resources and electricity resources of the planet. There will not be much human creativity, art or music if we have no water and no energy. That is what is going on with these people. They are literally hoovering it up. As has been said, the Government has bought the Kool-Aid, and so has the European Commission, it seems. Certainly Donald Trump does not pretend about his relationship with these monsters, quite frankly, in many cases, when you think about Palantir and Peter Thiel and what they do with AI, using it to help prosecute a genocide in Gaza. These people are horrific. I have difficulty with the idea that this has anything useful to contribute. I am not saying AI has no value at all.”
“Against that background, we are seeing these billionaires who run AI looking to steal en masse all of the artistic and creative output of humanity and to profit from it. The artists rightly are asking what the Government is going to do to prevent them making a bad situation for most artists and performers even worse. As Deputy Paul Murphy said, the Government's approach to AI to date has just been to get down on their knees and ask the tech bros what they want. They have got massive tax breaks to the tune of tens of billions of euro every year and anything they want in terms of the proliferation of data centres. I will tell the Minister of State one thing. When we think about 80% of the electricity in Dublin being used by data centres now, it is absolutely unbelievable.”
“It is absolutely incredible that about 50% to 57% of all professional artists in this country live on or below the poverty line - three times the level of poverty in Irish society generally. These are the people we are very happy to jump into photographs with when they win an award or achieve something wonderful because of their artistic ability but on a day-to-day basis the Government fails abysmally to keep them from living in poverty and to truly value the contribution they make to our society and culture. I do not know how many times we came in here campaigning on behalf of Equity and others who were campaigning for their fair and equitable remuneration for the work they do in areas like film and TV. That has still not been accomplished, as they are forced to sign buy-out contracts and not given proper payment for the work they do.”
“I thank Deputy Ó Snodaigh for bringing this motion forward. As Deputy Paul Murphy indicated, People Before Profit is very happy to support and commend all the artists, organisations, musicians and so on who are campaigning to bring this forward. I hope the fact that the Government is not opposing the motion means that it is actually going to take it seriously and do something in response to it. I have to say, I have my doubts about that. Before we even started to discuss AI in a serious way in this House, I do not know how many times the same organisations who are campaigning for this have asked us to raise - and we have - the extreme poverty that so many people who work in the arts and music have to endure in this country.”
“Will the Taoiseach intervene with St. John of God's so they do not have to continue with their justified industrial action?”
“St. Joseph's Centre in Shankill is the largest care home dedicated solely to dementia care in the country. SIPTU members feel compelled to take industrial action tomorrow because of the failure of St. John of God's to recognise the work and duties that they do. They are employed at a domestic grade, but, in reality, they do jobs way beyond that. They feed people, drive people around and do care duties, but St. John of God's is refusing to acknowledge that in terms of their grading and their pay structure. Nothing was offered when the case went to the Workplace Relations Commission, so the workers feel compelled to take industrial action tomorrow. Many of them have been working there for ten , 15 or 20 years. One person has been there for 37 years. These workers deserve to be recognised for the duties they do.”
“As somebody who was born in a mother and baby home, I find it pretty despicable that the Government has not stated its intention to stop a private, profit-driven developer from building on a site where the mother and baby home commission has said there are likely burials and where 19 mothers and 859 infants remain missing. The Government can overcome the obstacles if it wants to. It must demand that the site be taken into public ownership.”
“To me, peace is the absence of war but that sounds like she thinks peace is war. Peace is European military action in the Strait of Hormuz – not defensive action but sending troops to the Strait of Hormuz to deal with the problems created by a war started by the United States and Israel, to which we are providing the weapons to conduct that war while they are slaughtering Palestinians. I appeal to people; we have to protest against this madness. Money that von der Leyen wants to put into weapons should be going into housing, health, education and dealing with the cost-of-living crisis faced by working people. That should be our priority.”
“At the same time, the Government is going to get rid of the triple lock, which removes some barriers to the Government deploying troops in a European military project which Ursula von der Leyen has spelled out when she was speaking about the Strait of Hormuz, which the Minister mentioned. She said we must open the Strait of Hormuz. Who closed them? Israel, who we are arming and the United States. Donald Trump closed them by attacking Lebanon and Iran yet this is what von der Leyen said in April: A threat to a merchant vessel in the Strait of Hormuz is a threat to a factory, for example, in Belgium. So today I propose that we move beyond reactive crisis management. She went on to say the EU must consider expanding the scope of missions. She said together we should “build a region where peace is not merely the absence of war”.”
“Yes, we are looking for a suspension, which we know we will never get. Ireland is a major trading partner. The European Union as a whole has €43 billion worth of trade with a state that is in the dock for genocide. Ireland is one of the biggest of those trading partners at €5 billion worth of trade and the Government guts the Bill to impose minimal sanctions with the Occupied Territories Bill. In the midst of the genocide, we discovered €20 million in one year goes in dual-use exports to the Israeli military. That is to the Israeli military while it is committing a massacre.”
“To put that into perspective, how much has Russia, which is an aggressive imperialist power that has illegally and brutally attacked Ukraine, spent on military and weapons? €190 billion. Europe is already spending twice that but it wants to double that again. NATO in total spends 53% of all global arms expenditure, which is now above €3 trillion; in other words, €1.5 trillion – ten times what Russia spends. Spending lots on weapons does not stop war, does it? It does not stop the killing. What does it do? The European Union exports €800 million worth of armaments and weapons to the State of Israel while it is massacring and engaged in a genocide against the Palestinian people. It is profiting from genocide. It gives the state that is committing genocide favoured trade status.”
“The jamboree of propaganda for the EU has started with the beginning of the Irish EU Presidency. The bit that concerns me is confirmed in the Minister’s speech: The [Irish] Presidency will advance the measures set out in the White Paper on the future of European defence, the associated defence readiness roadmap 2030, and vital new initiatives on joint defence procurement. The paper she is referring to is the paper ReArm Europe. That is what this is about. That is what Zelenskyy’s visit is about and what von der Leyen is about. It is about doubling arms expenditure in Europe from the current level of €400 billion to more than €800 billion – just a little under €1 trillion.”
“Unless working people get organised, fight and take to the streets against the hikes in the cost of living and the unaffordable cost of housing and accommodation, and demand wealth taxes to redistribute wealth, we are not going to address the cost-of-living crisis in this country.”
“Is it stopping the speculation on land and property? No, it is rezoning land and making more property millionaires overnight. All this wealth is not a victimless crime. It is coming out of the pockets of people in unaffordable rents and unaffordable house prices. That is where they are making their fortunes, and we have a Government that is facilitating them in doing it while ordinary working people are being absolutely crushed. Profits in this country have gone up by 400% since I came into the Dáil. Have workers’ wages gone up by 400%? You must be joking. In real terms, workers are probably worse off because their pay increases have not kept up with inflation.”
“Contrast that with, for example, the postal worker who came in to see me the other day. The starting salary for a postal worker is €27,000 and the top of the scale is €41,000. He is in a housing assistant payment, HAP, tenancy with one bedroom but he has four children who have to come and stay with him, so they sleep on camping beds. Since An Post pays so poorly, they have not got enough postal workers, so he has to do a lot of overtime. However, if he gets too much overtime, he is going to go over the threshold for social housing and then he will not even be able to afford a home because there is absolutely no way he could afford private rents on his own salary. It is the multimillionaires who are charging these rents that he cannot afford. What is the Government doing to assist or address that situation? Is it introducing wealth taxes?”
“The more they charge in rents and the more they speculate on property affecting ordinary people affected by the housing crisis, the richer they get while ordinary people are crushed with the cost of living. I cannot help pointing to the fact that while all of this is happening and ordinary people are being crushed by the cost of living, they want to double arms expenditure across Europe because Donald Trump has told them to do it, to the benefit of the international arms industry. Money that should go into addressing the cost-of-living crisis and into housing, health and childcare is going to go into the pockets of the arms producers to make the billionaires and trillionaires even wealthier while ordinary people are bombed to bits, sent out to fight and crushed with the cost of living increases.”
“Since he got into power, his personal fortune has nearly tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.5 billion by ripping off working class people in the United States with his mate Musk. The billionaires and the trillionaires. Then they start wars. They support a genocide, they bomb Iran, they bomb Lebanon, and the cost of living goes up for working people in this country because of these billionaires and trillionaires. We have our own version of that in this country also benefiting from all of that. There are 11 billionaires in this country and the number is increasing. The Collison brothers, Denis O'Brien, John Dorrance and all these people have €46 billion in personal wealth. The richest 1% of Irish society have between them 35% of all the wealth, which adds up to about €400 billion. These people are creaming it.”
“The reason we have a cost-of-living crisis in this country and across the world for working people is because of the greed of billionaires, multimillionaires, warmongers and the governments that back them. The personal fortunes of Donald Trump and his mate, Elon Musk, sum it all up. This year, while ordinary people across the world are crushed with a cost-of-living crisis and some people are being bombed to bits by Musk and Trump's allies in Palestine, Iran or Lebanon, Musk's fortune has gone past $1 trillion. It is massively increasing. He is the world's first trillionaire. As for Donald Trump's fortunes, shame on anybody who ever echoed a word of support or praise for this guy.”
“I hope the Taoiseach will join me in condemning the awful arson attack on the Muslim prayer hall on Talbot Street on Monday night. I will not comment on the individual circumstances because I know a man has been detained, but representatives of the Muslim community have said that this followed weeks of scaremongering and anti-Muslim targeting of the people in that prayer hall. We know that there are elements that are really whipping up fear over people from Muslim backgrounds, immigrants and so on. As Irish people have suffered racism for generations, it is important that we stand up and oppose any kind of targeting of people because of their religion, ethnic background or race.”
“[we need] a massive increase in European defence spending ..." That is what is being urged by Ursula von der Leyen and the EU at the moment, namely, to double arms expenditure from about €400 billion to €800 billion at the same time as Europe is exporting about €800 billion in arms to Israel to commit genocide. We are a neutral country. That is about opposing militarism, war and so on. Is the Taoiseach going to speak up against that? Is he going-----”
“I spent much of last night conversing with a young man from Ukraine who fled here because he did not want to be conscripted into the disastrous Ukrainian-Russian war and is fearful he is going to be sent back there because Zelenskyy is asking that people of his age now be sent back to fight on a front line where tens of thousands are being slaughtered. That disastrous war was, of course, started by Putin but young men like him do not want to fight in it. The Taoiseach did not refer to the document I mentioned. It states "The moment has come for Europe to re-arm. ...”
“My fear is that the Government will use this as a propaganda jamboree to justify what we know it has committed to, which is getting rid of the Irish triple lock, removing obstacles to the deployment of Irish troops where there is no UN mandate, while Europe is pushing for greater militarisation-----”
“The background to that is a policy document of the EU titled, tellingly, ReArm Europe Plan, which was published in the middle of last year - ReArm Europe. I am sure the Taoiseach is familiar with it, and if he were not that, would be a serious abdication of his responsibilities. It is a document which proposes to dramatically increase arms expenditure in Europe - about double it - from approximately €400 billion per year to €800 billion per year. This is money that could be spent on addressing the cost-of-living crisis, the housing crisis, health and education, but Europe is proposing to double arms expenditure. This is at the same time that Europe is exporting about €800 billion worth of arms and military components to Israel while it commits a genocide against the Palestinian people.”
“I will be joining a demonstration outside Dublin Castle with anti-war and peace groups, pro-neutrality groups and Palestine solidarity groups, because they and I are concerned that, rather than using the position of the EU Presidency to defend our tradition of neutrality and reflect the views of the majority of Irish people, who want to protect that tradition of neutrality, the Government will cave in to the agenda of Ursula von der Leyen and the European Union to ramp up in an enormous way the militarisation of Europe and the arms industry in Europe, and that it will do this at a time when the European Union is deeply complicit in the horrific genocide Israel is committing against the Palestinian people.”
“As the Taoiseach knows, Ireland will take over the EU Presidency for six months as of tomorrow and the Taoiseach will host a launch event in Dublin Castle to commence the six months of the Irish EU Presidency.”
“These workers, and all workers, deserve pay increases that at least keep pace with inflation so that they are not losing income.”
“Workers at Haldane Fisher in Newry, one of the biggest construction supply companies in the whole of Ireland, North and South, and in the UK, are on strike because Haldane Fisher, a very profitable company, is offering them pay increases that are significantly below the rate of inflation. The workers reckon that they have actually lost about 3% or 4% in real income terms over recent years. Haldane Fisher seems to be trying to break the strike and is refusing to negotiate with Unite the Union, which represents the workers. I would say that one reason Keir Starmer is on his way out is because he failed working people on the cost-of-living crisis. That is something we should not do. It is important that a message be sent to Haldane Fisher. It should engage with these workers.”
“We need same-day testing and the rehabilitation of this decrepit water infrastructure that is preventing people swimming.”
“Met Éireann is saying that we are facing tropical temperatures tonight. It is absolutely baking out there and people want, and should be able, to swim. However, all across Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown there are warning notices saying people cannot swim. The reason - and I have raised this repeatedly - is because of the failure of Irish Water-Uisce Éireann to rehabilitate the water infrastructure and the fact that when heavy rains come down, rainwater mixes with sewage and it goes into Dublin Bay. The test results come three days later and there is a warning asking people not to swim. By the way, people are swimming despite this and endangering their health. I have raised this repeatedly. The only reason we have testing outside the bathing season, by the way, is because we fought for it in Dublin.”
“It should withdraw it and take on board what Deputy Ward is very reasonably asking for to help the many tens of thousands of people affected by this scandal. There may be a lot more affected.”
“First, the people have gone through having their homes crumble around them and become worthless and they have to rebuild them. Then they are being made build on foundations that could crumble again in the future, causing them anxiety, concern and all the hardship that would involve, in addition to the cost of doing that. It defies belief that the Government will not take on board what Deputy Ward is saying here, namely, that people should have the option to fully replace those foundations and, more generally, that the Government should be providing 100% redress from end to end to resolve this for all of those who have been affected by this terrible issue of defective concrete. The amendment the Government has put forward is extremely disappointing.”
“That means they are stuck in crumbling homes unable to deal with the consequences of something that was basically the responsibility of the Government and its failure to regulate cowboys - profit-driven, unscrupulous people - in the construction industry. On top of that, where people may try to rebuild their homes with an inadequate scheme, the Government is forcing them to build on foundations that may crumble in the future. Where people know that the material that could lead to that crumbling - the defective substances or substance that lead to these defects - are there but we do not know what will happen in the future, rather than giving those people the option to fully replace the foundations, the Government is insisting they build on foundations that could crumble. Why would the Government do that?”
“This stuff is still going on, so there is a lot at stake on these issues. It is shocking that at least 20,000 householders are living in homes that are crumbling around their ears and which are now worthless. They worked hard for those homes and they are worthless. They cannot sell them. The Government seemed to be crowing about its redress scheme, but if I understand this correctly, the reason only slightly more than 3,000 people have applied for it is that the scheme is so inadequate, and the gap between the cost of remediating a home and what the Government is willing to give means that for huge numbers of people affected by this issue the scheme the Government is proposing is completely inadequate and will not allow them to remediate their homes.”
“It is not something that has emerged in my constituency, at least so far, but I am aware of the consequences of the willingness by Fianna Fáil in particular, but also Fine Gael, to allow developers and people in the construction industry not to be properly regulated or controlled and for that to have devastating consequences on homeowners and renters, in particular with fire safety issues. Many tens of thousands of people are affected by buildings that were not built properly and have fire safety issues, which imposed costs and hardships on them. Some of that stuff is not over. I recently came across a new social housing development where, within months of moving in, people have damp, mould and so on all over the place and are having to fight to have those things addressed.”
“I commend Deputy Charles Ward on his diligent and relentless campaigning on behalf of the tens of thousands of people affected by defective blocks. He is one of those people personally affected, along with tens of thousands of others. I commend all of those who work with him in the 100% Redress party, and all of those who have been affected by this issue, on their campaigning and their refusal to take this lying down. I am very glad to support the motion. In a way, I am also very glad that I do not have the expertise Deputy Charles Ward has. I have been trying to get educated by him on the issue.”
“AI potentially threatens to do to hundreds of thousands of workers what is being done to Covalen workers. That is why we have to act now. AI aside, there are mass collective redundancies where companies refuse to talk to trade unions - as is happening in this case - do not consult with workers, dump workers and leave them high and dry, even though they have made big profits. We have seen that before with Debenhams and in many circumstances, yet the Government continues to allow it to happen. The Government must demand that these companies engage with workers and their trade unions, and use the Government's leverage with Cpl to tell it - an Irish company - that it cannot treat workers like this and if it does, it is getting no more Government contracts.”
“These are people who protect us from the toxic disgusting content of social media as content moderators. They do an important job in our society and are being treated like dirt. Many of them will walk away with nothing or minimum statutory redundancy while Covalen has made enormous profits for Cpl and for Meta. The Government should not allow this and should use the leverage of Cpl contracts with the Government to say it will not get any more Government contracts if it treats workers like dirt like this. It is in the interest of every worker to support Cpl workers because this is the future for other workers if Covalen gets away with this.”
“Covalen is a window into the future for hundreds of thousands of workers in this country and across the world about AI replacing their jobs and then being made redundant by companies that have made enormous profits off the back of those workers and then leave those workers high and dry. In the case of Covalen workers, nearly 1,000 workers have lost their jobs over the last year, 720 recently, almost halving the workforce. They trained the AI to replace them and then they got left high and dry. As Meta has said they cannot work for another six months for any other company, what are they supposed to do to pay the rent? Covalen, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cpl, an Irish company which has contracts with the Government, is refusing to even talk to the workers’ trade union.”
“I also ask for statements on the issue of historical abuse in schools. The Taoiseach said he will listen to the women from Cork who suffered the most terrible abuse. I raised the case of a man some time ago in the Chamber. He is in 70s and was abused terribly. His whole life has been impacted as a consequence. Coincidentally, he was in with me yesterday. He asked where the redress scheme is, if he is going to be included in it and if he will still be alive when it happens. It is just not acceptable that people who are victims of this abuse and whose lives were damaged permanently do not know the answers to those questions. We need an urgent discussion to answer questions for many people who were victims of this kind of abuse in our schools and about the State's responsibility.”
“That would be well worth investing in in every single school and would be an imperative to reach across the education system.”
“Excellent. Can we also, then, have psychology departments in post-primary schools? That would be the next thing, something that has happened in many other schools. We know mental health issues are huge in terms of special needs, neurodivergence and so on but also just generally for young people. There should be, as there are in many other countries, psychology departments in every single school. That should be an aspiration for us in every school. I agree with Deputy Toole's point about arts. When we talk about expanding the basic income for the arts scheme, we should develop a scheme to offer jobs to artists in every single school, whereby you get a decent, liveable income and you have time to practise your own art but also help bring art to children with special needs, disabilities and so on, and indeed to children generally in schools.”
“It is when that attitude of gatekeeping comes in that we get problems. In my last minute and a half I wish to mention a couple of things. When will the pilot project on providing therapies in schools be expanded to all schools? From what I hear, it is a storming success, and how could it not be? How could providing OTs, speech and language therapists and psychologists in schools not be a good thing? We do not really need to pilot any more. It is working. Let us just do it and roll it out and have a plan to get all these speech and language therapists, psychologists and-----”
“That, I think, was at the back of the recent debacle in terms of the withdrawal of special needs supports for so many schools, causing panic and alarm in school communities across the country. We must recognise those on the front line: the parents, the teachers, the SNAs, the children themselves, the school communities. They can tell us what the needs are. They are the experts. They should be believed; they should not be distrusted. It should not be thought that they are trying to rip the Department off of resources. Their words should be accepted. That is not to say that very occasionally people might not look for things they do not need. By and large, however, people do not look for things they do not need, and there should not be an attitude at Department level that people are looking for things they do not deserve.”
“It does speak more generally to something I think Simon Lewis said to me about the approach we have to have in ensuring inclusivity and in giving the necessary supports and resources to avoid a penny-pinching or box-ticking model that can end up not really doing justice to the actual human lived reality of children with disabilities or special needs. The way he put it, in literally one sentence, was that we have to trust schools, that we should just trust schools. There are so many buzzwords in all these documents, but I think that is what is referred to when we talk about rights-based and needs-based provision - that it is the actual needs that have to determine things, rather than ticking boxes or rationing resources, which is so often the case.”
“It does seem crazy to have a cliff edge of that sort. If you have 15 students, you get half an SNA post, but if you have 14, you get none, so you just go over a cliff. Then the school has to pick up the slack, and that will impact everything else in the school. An injury to one is literally an injury to all, and that is not fair. I ask, on behalf of Holy Family National School, all the children involved - the IPAS children and all the other children - and the teachers who will be impacted as a result of that, for that to be addressed and for the schools, please, to be heard.”
“I was not aware of that, but this is where you learn from people on the front line, in this case from Holy Family National School, in Monkstown Farm, in my area. The way SNAs are allocated is that for every 15 IPAS students the school has you get a half-time SNA, half a post, for 16 hours. If, however, the number of IPAS students drops below that number, you lose that. That is what has happened to Holy Family National School. This happens even if the number drops only temporarily. In the case of the Holy Family, the school informs me and has informed the Department that the number has briefly dropped below the threshold of 15 but that it will go back up above the threshold in September. In the meantime, however, the school has had the half an SNA post withdrawn and it simply cannot cope with the impact of that.”
“A "nothing about us without us" approach is terribly important in this regard. It is in that context that I want to highlight to the Minister of State - I do not know whether he got an email about this - the situation, which may be impacting more broadly than the particular example I have come across, of the allocation of SNAs to children under IPAS, which is a different system. The Government, in the context of the recent protests and so on, promised that there would be no reductions in SNA supports for schools in September, but that has not come to pass in the case of the provision of SNAs for children from IPAS accommodation. They are in the same schools as other children, but it is a different system for allocating special needs supports.”
“What we learnt from school communities, parents, teachers and SNAs during the recent events is that the role of the SNA had massively evolved from when the 2014 circular, for example, was originally done up; that a sort of minimalist approach to the special needs resources that were needed for children was not adequate; that there had to be recognition of that evolution of the role of the SNA in providing social support, communication support and emotional support to children; and that a minimalist approach which led people to think they could reduce SNA support on spurious grounds failed to take on board the actual needs of children and the views and opinions of the SNAs, the parents and the school communities. It was a matter of listening to those directly affected.”