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

I commend the Minister and Minister of State. I was curious as to how the Department would work. Both the Minister and the Minister of State have made this new Department work.

I hope that this Department is a feature of public policy into the future because it would be very difficult to have this type of conversation in the old Department that had everything under its remit, with one senior Minister.

The Minister has been very strong over the course of the year on all of the issues that have been touched on today. I congratulate him on that. If third level is to open up in September, as the Minister intends, it would be wonderful for all of those young people, and the students who are not so young. For many of us, attending third level education or colleges of further education was life forming. It was not necessarily just about what we learned in the lecture halls or tutor rooms. Mixing with other people from other backgrounds and other parts of the country and the world formed our identities. I congratulate the Minister on that plan.

The committee will have to meet again to consider the Cassells report. We must also talk about literacy, an issue on which the Minister is very committed.

Another issue I wish to raise is how we get role model professions that are under the Minister's remit to be more reflective of the society they serve. I have spoken to the Teaching Council and the Irish National Teachers Organisation on the issue. Let us consider, for example, the role of teaching. At primary level especially the teaching profession does not reflect the children in the classroom. We need to have proactive methodologies to encourage more working class children, children from a disadvantaged background, children with disabilities, children with an international background and children from a Traveller background into role model professions such as teaching. The CAO system is just not going to do it. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that. Other role model professions can also be powerful in that regard.

Notwithstanding the optimism around what will happen in this country in September, what is happening in the UK has worried everybody. We are not in control of that. Ireland's response to the Covid crisis was always contingent on what was happening next door. The Minister and Minister of State may not be able to repeat what I say, but what is happening across the water appears to be very ill-disciplined and reports are not encouraging with regard to the level of infection and the potential for new variants. If this happens over the course of the summer in the UK, and given that we have opened up to a certain degree here, I suggest we will still be talking about our envisaged opening up in August. Notwithstanding the well-placed optimism, I believe we need to be mindful of these factors.

My next question for the Minister is about next year's leaving certificate, which impacts significantly on the Department. Would it be a good course of action for the Department and the Department of Education to take time to engage with the educational partners at this point? If they were to roll out leaving certificate 2022 as they rolled out leaving certificate 2021, we would not be worrying about the leaving certificate in the coming spring arising from the potential loss of in-class teaching. This student cohort has already lost a large amount of in-school teaching. Could a quick decision be made on this issue to prepare for all of the knock-on effects for the third level sector, which falls under the Minister's remit?

I touched on a few issues and I am not expecting a full response on the Cassells report and all the issues I have raised. Considering what is happening in the UK and given that the situation is unpredictable, the big issue is that it would make everybody's life easier if we made a decision as quickly as possible on the leaving certificate for 2022, as we did on leaving certificate 2021.