Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Ms Reilly, Ms Joyce and Mr. Joyce. Well done to Ms Reilly on her exams and receiving the degrees. It is great altogether and such excitement. Mr. Joyce and I met just last week where we had an engagement with Young Fine Gael, which reached out and spoke with the Irish Traveller Movement. It was about issues affecting Traveller youth in particular and some of the concerns have been raised here again today. It was really lovely to get that opportunity to speak with Mr Joyce and to hear his concerns. I have also spoken with Senator Flynn on the amendments that are coming through the Traveller Culture and History in Education Bill 2018. As the Fine Gael spokesperson for further and higher education, research, innovation and science, I am very supportive of this.

Mr. Joyce's submission also referred to unconscious bias, which I too have spoken about previously. It is crucial that we all understand we have biases. It is about how we manage and deal with it. Over the last weeks and months, our committee has been dealing with the issue of bullying and how children can be picked out if they are seen as different. It is very important that we have early educational measures in there from primary school time.

I am conscious of my time and am keeping an eye on the clock. We are here to discuss inequality, the digital divide and reduced timetables. Mr. Joyce referred to 1 million students and he is so right. There are some 4,000 schools altogether, with 3,200 being primary schools and the rest being secondary schools. Mr. Joyce said that 11,000 students are in primary school and that perhaps only 3,000 go to secondary school. Mr. Joyce was looking at that drop-off in numbers as well, and I will open this topic up to other speakers too. What type of measures do the witnesses believe would encourage more retention of children going into secondary schools? It is about those transition points from primary to secondary and from junior cycle to the senior cycle. What measures could be put in place or what role models and how could we support that more? As we already have children who are in learning, how do we keep them?

I understand that sometimes there are cultural differences at different ages, and particularly with young marriage and so on in Traveller culture. Opening this up, the witnesses have referred to further education and training, FET. Ms Reilly spoke more on this and Mr. Joyce spoke about the drop-off in numbers. On further and higher education, and particularly for young women and Traveller women, how does Ms Reilly believe that we could encourage women in their early 20s to come back in possibly to do apprenticeship programmes or to engage in FET? The college of further education in Ballinasloe has nursing and healthcare courses and it is really popular. We have had a lot of students coming through there, including students from Traveller backgrounds. It has been very positive and popular.

On the digital divide, reference was made to a number of supports and funding that came through from the Minister, Deputy Harris, of €300,000. We have also had funding for laptops at third level under the digital divide. Some €15 million has been allocated for students with disadvantage. Access to space is also a very big issue, which was mentioned by Ms Reilly.

I very much appreciate what Ms Joyce said about the early years education during her last contribution with Deputy Ó Laoghaire. A lot has been done by this Government and the previous Government into looking at affordable childcare and how to support families getting affordable childcare. In this instance, it is about how we support people getting back into education. A number of points have been given but is there anything else we can do to encourage older people coming back into education again? I put those questions to Mr. Joyce first then Ms Reilly and Ms Joyce.