Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On a day when the country is talking about literacy through the exploits of Leopold Bloom, giving a child the ability to read independently is probably one of the greatest gifts one can give. It is better than a situation I experienced recently. A man in his fifties arrived at my constituency office. I gave him a form for a housing adaptation grant and he told me he could not fill it out because he was illiterate. The only other person who knew that was his wife. He had reared a family and put them through university. Early intervention does work and I acknowledge the Minister's reply in respect of that.

The Minister mentioned DEIS band 1 and band 2 schools. She knows the make up of my constituency as she is in a neighbouring constituency. She knows that there are very few DEIS schools there. However, a child can be as educationally and socially disadvantaged in a small rural school or a small urban school as they can be in an inner-city school or on an island. One does not need to be fixed in a particular postal address box to be educationally disadvantaged. This is the point the teachers and I are making. If one likens it to learning support and resource, can one imagine the hullabaloo that would occur if the Department said that only DEIS band 1 and band 2 schools were to get learning support and resources. There would be uproar from parents and rightly so.

This programme works. We saw children last Friday from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds and diverse backgrounds. They had very little in common other than the difficulty they had in their early capture of literacy. The programme worked. It does not matter whether one is the child of a millionaire in Sandymount or the child of an unemployed person in Ballydehob. It is a very short programme held during the late part of senior infants and the early part of first class. The Minister referred to second class and she is dead right because that is the point where these issues are measured. That is the point when the MICRA-T and the SIGMA-T are administered in schools and the child is essentially categorised as needing learning support and resource or not. It is too late at that stage, which is why I am asking that every child, regardless of where they come from, their parents' occupation or their school, would have access to a programme like this that will allow them to enjoy what the rest of take for granted, namely, the ability to pick up something and read it independently.

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