Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for being with us today and for all the work that they and their quite small team, considering the amount of work they get through, do in responding to complaints, the investigative work, all the reports they put together and the important recommendations in those reports. I wish them well in their 20th year. It is a significant milestone. The Ombudsman for Children has had a massive impact on Ireland and its society in that time.

More than half the complaints the ombudsman receives are about education. That is an area I am particularly interested in learning more about myself, because I get many complaints about education too. I would be especially interested in hearing more about their plan for places and recommendations on that. The constituency I represent contains Clondalkin, Lucan, Palmerston, Newcastle and Rathcoole. We have children with special educational needs in primary school but there seems to be a pinch point when they make the transition to post primary. We are talking about parents and children who have had to fight for so much already. They have a summer of discontent because they do not know where they will be starting school in September, when all their peers and friends have their letters of acceptance to different schools. It adds so much stress and uncertainty for a family who already have to struggle with so much. It usually puts much added pressure on a child who often requires stability, routine and certainty. My questions are about recommendations to improve the system for students with special educational needs.

My second question is about school buses. A constituent of mine got a response from the Office of the Ombudsman for Children this week. She raised the lack of an adequate school bus system for her child in Newcastle to attend the local school. While the investigation happened and concluded, the conclusion was that the rules were applied correctly. They absolutely were. How do we get those rules changed to allow people who are in her situation to have access to a school bus, especially now when we are looking at a situation when there is so much more access to school buses at a much more affordable rate?

My final question is about last week's leaving certificate maths examination. It is probably too early to have an indication on it but if the witnesses want to correspond with the committee afterwards, I would be interested to know if they received representations and complaints from leaving certificate students or their parents about last week's maths examination. A number of really distressed students contacted my office. My heart went out to them. One of the students was particularly passionate about maths. This was the area she was likely to fully succeed in. The damage an unfair paper can do to a child's confidence at a time when the child is going through a particularly stressful time, doing State examinations, is just awful. Have the witnesses any preliminary feedback on that? The vast majority of this year's leaving certificate class had never done a State examination, so they were probably already starting at a disadvantage with regard to nerves and not having the background of having already sat an exam. That added turmoil really added to the stress. My heart went out to students in that situation.