Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and Minister of State for their presentations. I hope to speak on a number of issues, some of which are areas of agreement while others are potentially areas of disagreement. I will start with areas of agreement. I was impressed with the Minister's presentation on the issues of literacy and apprenticeships. Statistics on the levels of education among prisoners, for example, are disturbing. Two studies in recent years showed that half of our prisoners have a junior certificate qualification or lower. The Minister spoke about the high rate of functional illiteracy in Ireland which is one in six, meaning that around 18% of Irish adults are functionally illiterate. That level represents an improvement in recent years but it is still disturbingly high. The Minister spoke about members of the Traveller community and people with disabilities. I work with the Professional Football Association of Ireland, PFAI, which has told me that one third of League of Ireland footballers have only a junior certificate as their highest qualification. I ask the Minister to work with the Opposition on the issues of literacy and apprenticeships. Is there potential for us to work together on the establishment of a national literacy agency, as suggested by the National Adult Literacy Agency, NALA? This would bring together all of the components, which are in eight or nine Government Departments, and put them into one single agency that could drive the issue of literacy across the board, including child, adult and family literacy. Two Private Members' Bills were introduced in the previous Dáil, one from the Government and the other from the Opposition, to provide for plain language in public documents to make them much more accessible. Often those who need public documents most are in the cohort of people with lower literacy levels. I ask the Minister and Minister of State to comment on those points first.