Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for being here throughout the whole debate, which is very welcome. Unfortunately, I did not have sight of this until today. I do not know where the breakdown in communication was. Separately, I note that the print is particularly small. It may be that I need to change my glasses but it is difficult to read it. I will start on a positive note by welcoming the announcement recently on special needs assistants, which is welcome. I welcome the announcements on apprenticeships and on a total of 116 major capital projects. While I welcome all of that, it must be put in context. In the first instance, there should have been no cutbacks in relation to the most vulnerable people in society and those with special needs. That should not have happened. While it is back, I cannot deal with it without understanding its context. Similarly, Deputy Coppinger made the point on capital investment. While I welcome the projects, what is the background? One of the schools in Na Forbacha has been the subject of a campaign for 20 years. When one looks at it in that context, a slightly different picture emerges.

What I will do tonight is focus on four areas, including DEIS, school transport, literacy and the division between new entrant teachers and existing ones. DEIS has been suspended from 2009, which was an appalling decision. It is even worse that it has remained suspended right up to 2016. I have asked two parliamentary questions and been told a review is under way. I have been given no timeframe for that review. It is unjustifiable to have a review ongoing for that period of time. At the risk of being parochial, I illustrate the general point by looking at the Merlin Woods national school, which just missed out on inclusion because it applied in 2010. It is a co-educational primary school located on the east side of Galway city. It opened its doors for the first time five years ago in 2010 due to the urgent need for a new school. It is in an area which has high levels of social and economic disadvantage as identified by various research projects, including from NUIG and, indeed, the city council itself. I will not go into those but to refer to one paragraph from the research. In that particular school, which does not qualify for DEIS, as it has been suspended, more than 85% of the pupils come from non-English speaking backgrounds. Approximately one quarter of the parents are lone parents and many live in local authority housing. Of the parent body, 75% is unemployed. Some providers in the above-mentioned research indicate that there is a high level of deprivation and social exclusion experienced generally in the area. The principal states "We are a new school, challenged with providing an education to the children of our area without the resources that any other school in similar circumstances has". At present, there are 300 children in the school and that will go up to 450. A whole school evaluation conducted in 2004 gave superb feedback to the school. The staff, principal and parents are to be congratulated on the wonderful result. However, in black print and highlighted in a detailed letter given to all the candidates in the local election, the principal states "We are at breaking point". The principal appealed to us to get that school into the DEIS scheme but nothing has happened.

The Minister may keep his head down and he may be bored by the facts. I do not know. However, I ask him to tell me when DEIS is going to be reinstated. In his Revised Estimates, there is a reference to DEIS and it talks about the improvement in leaving certificate retention rates. For DEIS schools, there was a retention rate in 2013 of 80.1%, which went up to 80.4% in 2014. In 2015, it went up to 82.8%. Many reviews have been referred to and I will go back to them when I move to literacy. They show that there have been improvements as a result of the DEIS scheme. If the Minister is seriously interested in education as indicated by the wonderful words in his opening speech in relation to education and its importance, his acts must speak louder than his words.

The OECD programme for international assessment of adult competence, or PIAAC, set out in its 2012 results that one in six people in Ireland is at level 1 literacy. Translated into figures, that is 521,550 Irish adults, more than half a million, who find reading and understanding everyday texts difficult. In plain English, it is very difficult for them to read a bus timetable or medicine instructions. One in four, or 754,000, has difficulties with maths. That is real world maths from basic addition and subtraction to calculating averages. Significantly, the survey also showed that people who scored at the lowest literacy and numeracy levels often have no or low qualifications, earn less income and were unemployed and in poor health. I must say that there is an improvement in the literacy figures because prior to that, it was one in four. I welcome the improvement but we still have that phenomenal figure of 521,550 people who are at the basic level through no fault of their own. We have utterly failed that group of people which is significant and substantial.

There are only 55,000 people attending adult literacy services currently. While I welcome the fact they are in the services, they are a tiny proportion of the overall figure. The Minister's own national skills strategy that will take us up to 2025 targets the upskilling of 165,000 people, which is welcome. The target for numeracy is an upskilling of 256,000 people. However, without considerable resources going into that, those targets will not be met. Even if we meet those targets, that still leaves a substantial proportion of the population with unmet needs. That is just level 1. I do not have the time to go into levels 2 or 3 but one can imagine the implications for taking full-time employment and, more importantly, for leading a healthy, wealthy life. If one is at that basic level, there are serious restrictions on one's participation in society at every level.

In the Minister's Estimates, there is a serious reduction in the number of students to be provided with school transport services. From what I can see on page 32, it is reduced by 3,000 from 114,000 to 111,000.

This figure has been mentioned by a Sinn Féin Deputy. The number of routes will increase, but the overall number of pupils on school transport will decrease significantly. For the life of me, I cannot understand this.

I wish to raise a number of points about school transport relating to cases in which people are begging for the service. Galway city has a major traffic congestion problem, yet school transport services are being reduced. According to the bureaucratic speak being sent out in letters, if one is 3.2 km or less from a school, one is not entitled to travel on a bus. That is an arbitrary figure. I have a petition from students at Scoil Bhríde in Shantalla, Galway, who travel farther than 3.2 km but who have been told to attend a DEIS school - it is fortunate to have a DEIS designation - and that they are not entitled to school transport because they come from the Knocknacarra area, where there are other schools, albeit not DEIS ones. The children have no choice but to attend the DEIS school. This type of bureaucratic stuff is Kafkaesque. Similarly, in Claregalway and Headford, families are being split, with one child travelling on a bus in one direction and the parents going by car in another.

This situation is being compounded by a plan to reduce school transport further. From the point of view of sustainable transport and reducing traffic congestion in the interests of climate change, I appeal to the Minister on every level to review this situation and listen to the people on the ground, some of whom are willing to pay for concessionary tickets but cannot get any, and others who need that transport.

The difference in salary scales for new entrants to the teaching profession has been mentioned by many Deputies. We attended a briefing on this at 5.30 p.m. today. The difference in pay is not justified on any level. No Deputy present - we are all on the same salary, unless we are Ministers - could justify sending his or her children to a school where teachers were on different pay levels based on a decision to effect cutbacks in order to bail out bankrupt banks. In the interests of new politics, it is time to undo the damage that we have done on every level. It is time for payback.

I have asked for a review of DEIS schools, but my final point is about a review of literacy and numeracy levels. The review of numeracy was the baseline, as nothing had been done previously. There is an onus on us to monitor literacy and numeracy skills annually so that we might have a baseline from which to determine whether progress is being made.

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