Mr. David Duffy:

I thank the committee for this opportunity to make a submission on the topic of school costs, school facilities and related matters. Ireland has an internationally acknowledged high-performing education system despite spending relatively little on education. The rapidly improving economic situation means that the Government is in a good position to make a meaningful contribution to improving school facilities and reducing school costs incurred by parents.

Ireland has a very young population. The latest projections by Department of Public Expenditure and Reform are that post-primary enrolments are expected to rise by 12.5% between 2018 and 2024. This creates obvious issues regarding the timely provision of school buildings. The TUI believes that free education should mean genuinely free education. Barnardos has estimated that genuinely free post-primary education would only cost €127 million. A useful first step would be restoration of the full capitation block grant to schools and education and training boards, ETBs. This would only cost €18.5 million. This is a tiny sum in the context of the State's funding of approximately 60 fee-paying schools to the tune of €115 million.

Funding to achieve genuinely free post-primary education could be sourced, at no net cost to the Exchequer, through a financial transactions tax, the restoration of the 13.5% rate of VAT on the hospitality industry or the abolition of bogus self-employment, which is designed solely to rob workers of employment rights and to place some businesses beyond the tax net.

As for school facilities, as well as catering for the rapid rise in student numbers over the next seven years, it is important that the school buildings programme should take account of the provision of special classes for students with autism. It also should take account of special educational needs generally such as, for example, the availability of resource rooms to provide small group and one-to-one tuition, the need for provision of ancillary staff to maintain buildings and keep them open at night, adequate and sufficient bathroom facilities for staff and students including members of the transgender community; increases in building costs especially in remote areas where they tend to be higher and the updating of facilities such as science laboratories. The programme also should take account of the importance of temporary buildings not taking over playing facilities and of curricular needs where, for example, some schools do not have access to sufficient - or in some cases any - PE halls, science laboratories, home economics kitchens, woodwork and engineering rooms etc.

School facilities will become an even more urgent issue when the revised junior cycle is fully rolled out. Its emphasis on experiential learning requires adequate facilities for such learning to take place. Recent and upcoming changes in senior cycle also create a buildings facilities issue. New examination subjects such as computer science and PE have been warmly welcomed by the TUI but create clear issues regarding the availability of facilities. These issues include provision for specialised provision in the further education sector as it often has very particular needs due to the increased specialisation for the programmes provided, the numbers of students present and the older age profile of those students, supporting new schools where they are temporarily being housed in primary schools and meeting local and language needs such as for Gaelcholáistí.