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

I thank the witnesses who are very welcome. I will start on the literacy issue because it has been a feature of the presentations the Minister, Deputy Harris, has made to committee. He has also made public comments on the need to tackle the issue of adult literacy. I would like to hear the perspectives of our witnesses on how effectively we can do that.

As has been said, 17.9% of the adult population is functionally illiterate. How can educators be agents of change in that regard? I am interested in Ms Hanney's comment on how one-to-one teaching is going to be much more advantageous in that. There will be issues overcoming Covid related restrictions in that respect.

On the issue of how Covid has affected the ability of the ETBs to deliver their services, the digital divide was mentioned. I have spoken to a number of second level principals, who spoke about the lack of knowledge on the part of policymakers of the digital divide. It is not about access to broadband; it is about access to devices that can be utilised. A principal told me that 60% of her student body could only access the work through their smartphones.

I have some more general questions. What have we learned from this period? As is often said, a good crisis should not be wasted. I worry that we will move beyond this crisis, feel that we have survived this period and look to the future, hoping that things will go back to exactly where they were previously. We all have a responsibility to learn from the deficiencies that have been exposed by this health crisis. Lessons were learned from the financial crisis a number of years ago, and structures were put in place. I hope the same will happen across education.

The issue of funding has been mentioned by the witnesses and I take those comments on board. Do they believe there is something deeper, more profound and more structural that the education system can react to in learning from what Covid has exposed? If so, what would that be? We are all collectively trying to empower everybody in this country to maximise their capabilities, and the services provided by the organisations represented here today are key to that. I have a profound worry that, as with the financial crash, there is a feeling that things would be great if we could only get back to the good times. However, for many people working in education and society, and for those I have mentioned with lower literacy levels, things were not so great before. What can we learn from this experience to ensure that if we ever face this issue again, we will be in a much better position to survive it, and so that the education sector can thrive?