Dara Murphy (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)

I wish to share my time with Deputy Brian Walsh.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Education (Amendment) Bill 2012, which is broadly supported and perhaps not as contentious as other issues we have been debating. I welcome that the changes are designed to provide legal certainty in regard to the capacity of the Minister for Education and Skills and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform to ensure redeployment arrangements for teachers continue to meet, in a fully effective manner, the requirement of the current fiscal situation and that teachers who are surplus are deployed to vacancies in other schools while at the same time ensuring the Department can continue to fully honour the commitment in the Croke Park agreement which provides for flexible arrangements instead of redundancy. This is one of the most important elements of the Croke Park agreement which has perhaps been overlooked by some who seek to look only at one side of it. It is an area where we will start to see the other side of the Croke Park agreement, namely, efficiencies and redeployment coming into play.

I refer briefly to the Minister's speech earlier this evening and previously in the Seanad in which he reaffirmed his commitment to DEIS. In the city part of my constituency of Cork North-Central, only two primary schools are not DEIS schools. I have had a significant amount of engagement over the past number of months. It is extremely refreshing that we have a Minister who engaged with the process and who listened in a very measured fashion to some of the debate on disadvantage and disadvantaged schools. It is extremely welcome that commitment was mentioned again this evening. It is also reassuring that the Government is looking so decisively and productively at the issue of how we, as a society, deal with our most disadvantaged children. As a politician, I was struck by the fact that many of the schools put forward very strong arguments through their teaching staff. Unlike other issues with which we deal as politicians, the lobbying from some of the schools, in particular in the more disadvantaged areas, was quite muted which proved that, as politicians, we have a responsibility to protect as many schemes as we can which deal with disadvantage.

One of the other main provisions in the Bill concerns the employment, in certain exceptional and limited circumstances, of persons who are not registered teachers under the Teaching Council Act 2001. I wish to bring to the Minister's attention the case of the COPE Foundation in Cork and other such schools. Teaching is a varied profession and teachers deal with a very broad range of students. I am not sure if the Minister is aware of the COPE Foundation in Cork, an organisation of which we are extremely proud. It deals with people with a range of physical and intellectual difficulties. The principal of one of the primary schools, which I will not name and which deals with children with very serious physical difficulties, made the case to me that she must employ teachers from the lists provided and the contracts that exist, but that many of those teachers would be incapable of performing some of the jobs done by her teachers. By virtue of their employment, they have effectively become teaching and nursing staff. It involves a particular vocation given the difficulties many of the young people have. I hope that when the Minister talks of exceptional and limited circumstances he, or any subsequent Minister, will have regard to areas such as this.

What commends the Bill to me is the degree to which a veto will be removed from decisions which require to be taken. In other words, agreement in all cases will be changed so that one person or one group will be disallowed from vetoing a decision which may be in the best interests of the educational needs of a school or young person.

The Bill makes a clear statement on, and commitment to, training and education and ensuring our teachers and staff feel there is a benefit to becoming as qualified as possible. In circumstances where there is local pressure or legacy issues, they will recruit on the basis of qualification and expertise. This is good news for young people entering the teaching profession. In appointing a full Minister for Children and Youth Affairs to the Cabinet, the Government has displayed great ambition in how it seeks to look after young people. The measures in the Bill must be welcomed.

Despite the changes in 1998, clarification for the delivery of speech therapy services and other health and personal services to students of school going age is welcome. The proposed provisions will not impact on the availability of speech therapy and other services. No services will be lost and every service being delivered will continue to be delivered, even if there is some change between the relationship of the Department of Education and Skills to the Departments of Health and Children and Youth Affairs. I commend the Bill and congratulate the Minister on bringing it forward.

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