Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is a very important motion. Yesterday, Ms Tanya Ward, chief executive of the Children's Rights Alliance, and Ms Gráinne McKenna, an assistant professor at DCU, presented some of the findings of their report, Home Works: A Study on the Educational Needs of Children Experiencing Homelessness and Living in Emergency Accommodation. Reference was made to the 4,000 children who are homeless. The study reflects the issue we all know of and deal with week in and week out when we meet families with homeless children. We find echoes of the impact homelessness is having on the children's lives and their schooling when they sit in front of us and we see the anguish and disappointment on their faces. Deputy Boyd Barrett eloquently outlined earlier the disastrous impacts of homelessness on children.

It is more than four years since I brought this issue to the attention of the Ombudsman for Children, and over the past three years I have constantly raised it with the Minister, Deputy Zappone. It cannot go unsaid that we cannot accept a situation in which homeless children are a permanent feature of the Irish education system or Irish society. That would be a total outrage. While this hapless Government tries to come to grips with the matter, the aims of the motion before us are very valuable. Homework support grew out of the fact that teachers were noticing students arriving to school hungry and with difficulties in getting all their school gear and so on together on the way in. There is no guidance whatsoever available to schools when families or students tell them they are homeless. Principals and teachers have been doing their best in very difficult circumstances but are left looking for support and information themselves.

During research for the paper we heard yesterday, teachers told of how they sometimes brought in snacks to school for children and of children who started crying when putting on their coats because they were not going home, or at least not going to a forever home like the vast bulk of our children, but were going to a hotel or a family hub or whatever. In many cases, as the Minister knows from her constituents, children have to trek across the city, facing very early starts to get to school for 9 a.m. and then another big trek home. This is a totally unacceptable situation. It is extraordinary we have allowed this to develop in our country over the past decade. It is an appalling, shameful thing. It is not the children who should be embarrassed; it is we who should be embarrassed as a Dáil that has not brought this to an end.

The motion includes a very simple group of recommendations: a €5 million ring-fenced fund for schools; guidelines and recommendations to be sent to boards of management urgently; and representatives of the Department and the education system to be included in the Rebuilding Ireland action plan as we try to bring this horrible situation to an end. The Children's Rights Alliance particularly stressed the need for a small budget for schools to help deal with the needs of students experiencing homelessness; a teacher to be allocated to act as a support, just like a home school liaison officer; and the whole area of guidance. The motion before us has sought to address these matters. We support the motion and the reasonable request from Government, but it is appalling that we have allowed this situation to come to pass, that we have broken through the 10,000 barrier and that we are not taking urgent emergency steps to bring this whole situation to an end in order that our teachers, whose first priority, obviously, is the education of our young people, do not also have to deal with the suffering of children who are homeless.

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