Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not see other members offering. Deputy Gannon has left for the Chamber where there are statements.

Before bringing matters to a formal conclusion, I will add to the questions of the members who spoke most recently. I refer to Ms McKenna's opening statement. With particular reference to the sustainable development goals, SDGs, in particular, goal 4, Ms McKenna states, and we have heard this previously in the context of Covid, that the pandemic itself and the consequent social restrictions, and the economic consequences of such social restrictions, have blown the SDG targets off course. It seems from Ms McKenna's statement that with the last two SDGs, one of which we are dealing with today, namely, goal 4 on education, whatever chance we had of reaching that target is blown off course now with Covid. That means that none of the goals will have their targets reached by 2030.

With specific reference to education, I note that SDG 4 deals not only with education but "quality" education. That word is used. Before we conclude, I ask some of our guests at the coalface to deal with the issue of quality. For me, quality education means attaining a certain standard, having quality teaching, having a reasonable type of infrastructure and having a class size that might be considered appropriate for the delivery of quality education. It appears that in some countries, particularly some African countries, class sizes could be off the Richter scale as far as we are concerned in Ireland, with 100, 120 or 130 people, perhaps no formal hours and perhaps competing interests of a type Mr. Casey mentioned. My question is a difficult one but how do our guests see SDG 4 on the matter of quality education coming back to some type of realisable target for 2030, and that the developed world does not just engage in some hand-wringing and say it is not going to reach this goal because of the Covid-19 pandemic? What can we do to catch up, as it were?