Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 29 May 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills

Barriers to Education Facing Vulnerable Groups: Discussion

3:30 pm

Photo of Lynn RuaneLynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Bill I have is being taken in the Seanad at the moment. I am going to have to leave after I pose my questions. Obviously, I will look back on the transcripts when we are writing the report. I apologise for the coming and going. I put forward this session but it is unfortunate that the legislation was put in today as well, and that will take me out for a few minutes. I apologise for that, but I have read all the transcripts. This is an area close to my heart.

One of my questions is for Mr. Nevin. The Chairman that said we have come a long way since 1963. My first inclination is to disagree with that. Many years of oppression were placed on a community who were basically deskilled and disempowered. The deficit is so big that it takes more than ethnicity and recognition to roll back the layers of oppression and that to which the latter has given rise for this particular group. Can Mr. Nevin talk a little more about what acknowledgement of that oppression would mean? Traveller children were in institutions that rejected them for so long. Consequently, a great deal of healing is required in terms of recognition of identity and the years of oppression that existed. Perhaps Mr. Nevin could talk a little more about that.

Mr. Dignam referred to a cross-departmental working group. That is a positive idea. Professor Lynch referred to the intersection of it all and how poverty is a common denominator.

Would Mr. Dignam see that working group representing all those groups across which poverty and disadvantage are common denominators rather than only considering care leavers? Would he also see it examining the commonality across all the groups in terms of barriers to education? He might address the way in which the working group might engage with the stakeholders?

I do not believe Professor Lynch has ever said anything with which I have disagreed. A sentence in her submission reads, "There is a need for a systematic review and regulation of the private for-profit education market in Ireland at all levels of education." If there was reform in that area, I would be eager to know what it would look like. How do we tackle the issue of advantage? When I was elected to the Seanad, my wages increased and straight away I paid for advantage for my daughter in that I paid for her to have grinds, which I would not have been able to afford a few years ago. I went from being a lone parent in poverty to using the advantage and cultural capital I had gained. I was very aware that her classmates in school would not have that advantage. My 11 year old daughter, who is much younger, will never face the barriers her older sister had to face. How do we tackle that issue? Is the private not-for-profit education market an area in which we might begin to tackle that issue? I have to leave briefly as I have to second a measure in the Seanad but I will read all the contributions, and I will be back later.

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