Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Thank you Chair. I wish to note my frustration that we are having a truncated meeting of 45 minutes. I pushed for this session. We are talking about an issue that affects 6,000 children and, by extension, our entire school community. I do not think 45 minutes is enough to cover the huge number of questions I have.

I thank the Ministers for their presentations and for passing along the briefing notes. They raise a large number of questions for me. The Russians invaded Ukraine on 24 February, so we are approaching 100 days since that happened. I said from the start that we would have to think about how we were going to approach this to try to ensure we got the best educational outcomes for the children we knew were going to arrive on our shores. I cannot help but feel we have just defaulted to folding them into our regular school community. If we had considered all factors and decided that was the best approach, that would be fine. I am not sure I see the evidence of considering all of the factors. I accept as in Maslow's hierarchy of needs that we needed to get these children accommodated. We needed to make them feel safe and secure within our schools but I think we need to be thinking beyond that as well.

I note in the briefing note that even when we talk about curriculum, it states explicitly that in the immediate term that we are focusing on ensuring that school places can be secured for students from Ukraine and that in the medium to longer term, the Department is seeking advice from the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment regarding the model of curriculum provision. We are still not at the point where we are considering specific curricular needs. That is going to be complex in terms of planning because the children are going to present as complex in the first place. Obviously, they are coming from a very different cultural and social background but also they are arriving with very complex emotional needs which will have been caused by their trauma. We also need to be thinking about how long these children are going to be staying with us and making educational decisions around that.

I will begin with some questions because I have a large number of questions. There are organisations that have experience in planning for the educational needs of displaced people. UNICEF would be one of the organisations that jumps out in the first instance. Have we engaged with it? Have we spoken to people who have expertise and experience in these contexts? It will not be the exact same context because an Irish primary school is a million miles removed from a Syrian displaced persons camp, for example. Surely there are lessons to be learned from that.

If we have engaged with the Ukrainian education minister, what is it we have learned in terms of what they are hoping for in education not just here in Ireland but across Europe? My third question is on whether we have engaged with education ministers across Europe. Many of these people will arrive first in Poland or Moldova and will then arrive in Ireland and will remain mobile, as has been mentioned, even within our school communities. They may arrive into Dublin or Waterford. Tramore is a good example. Many people were accommodated there first. The schools have done an outstanding job in terms of folding them into the school community but how long with they be in Tramore? We do not know. Have we given any consideration to trying to standardise a curriculum?

Deputy Ó Laoghaire referred to school uniforms. What about school books? As they move from one school to another, are they going to be accommodated? How many of these children who finished school in Tramore, Youghal, Dublin or wherever in June, will be in that same school in September? Are we modelling for that? I have probably 1 million more questions but I will leave it at that for the moment.