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

I apologise that I was not here for the presentations in the earlier part of the meeting. Unfortunately, I will need to go once our conversation is finished.

I used to be a school principal and the best advice I ever got was that I should place the child at the centre of all my decisions. In all interactions with the board management, the patron body, the Department of Education, staff or parents, as long as there is a child at the centre of a principal's decision, then no one can ever question their integrity. They will not always win, but they should keep that focus. Since I have gone into politics, I have found that very few people advocate for children really. Boards of management will advocate for the school. Teachers' unions will advocate for teachers. Patron bodies will advocate for the ethos of the school. It is very difficult to get a body that actually advocates purely and simply for the rights of the child.

In my part of the world there are exasperated parents who cannot get assessments and or the basic interventions that parents in any other European country would take as the norm. They face incredibly elongated waiting lists of up to 72 months a number of times for various interventions. We have the cruel scenario of trying to get a child into the local school. Imagine the humiliation of parents going to the local school and being told that there is no place for their child because of what their child is like. They have come to the conclusion that they just have to accept this and go from school to school, sometimes going to up to 20 schools.

We now have this new provision from the Department. I do not want to be unfair to the Department, but I feel this is an area that it does not embrace, love or celebrate. It feels like it is a massive drag on the resources and the money it needs to spend. I know that because even within the system SNAs are not respected. In many school staff rooms, they are not respected. Teachers are called by their second name, but SNAs are called by their first name; that is a deliberate hierarchical decision made within staff rooms. When I stepped into that space as a teacher, I was the de facto substitute for the year. There was a sense that I was not really doing a very productive job and because Ms So-and-so was out, I just had to step into her class for the day. There is that level of disrespect at a local level and at the national level as well. Parents then feel they have to go through war for basic provisions. I do not even know what I am asking the witnesses. They might like to reflect on some of the things I have said.

I believe that we may have too many primary schools. Politicians saying that means that some people immediately accuse me of wanting to close down schools. That is not necessarily so. I feel we have too many schools with a small enrolment and if they had a bigger enrolment, they could easily subsume all the challenges presented to them in their own geographical area. I am fascinated by the Finnish model whereby every child in the jurisdiction around the school has an absolute right to attend that school and must attend that school. There is never any question around resources. There would never be a question mark over facilitating a child regardless of their background. How can we get to a position where we can achieve that?

On the more recent development, the Minister has said that 66% of schools will not be affected by the new allocation model, which by my basic maths means 34% will be affected, but she said it would be by no more than five hours. I apologise if this question has already been answered. Can the witnesses give us some kind of picture as to what that will really mean for the 34% of schools affected? Mr. Harris might wish to reflect on some of the things I have said there. I know we have had some communication recently over this.