Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to speak on this motion on educational supports for children experiencing homelessness. I compliment Deputy Thomas Byrne and his colleagues on bringing it forward.

We speak about the chaos in the United Kingdom Parliament as a national embarrassment to its politics, but the issue of child homelessness is equally a national embarrassment for this Parliament and the Government in particular. That is, if the Government could be embarrassed. I am of the view that it is past being embarrassed. It has not a morsel of shame. We simply cannot imagine the sense of disorientation children experience when they go through the trauma of finding themselves in emergency accommodation. I ask the House to just think about this. Any of us who has ever gone on holidays with our kids knows that after a day in a hotel they are frustrated and annoyed and want to get back to the familiar surroundings of a home, and they on holidays. I know very well one family who found themselves in this appalling situation an bhliain seo caite. Their nine year old deaf son was so affected that his speech development regressed by almost two years during about 12 or 14 weeks. This is the blackguarding and the neglect that the Government is wilfully perpetrating on young people.

We are here talking about the educational needs of children in homelessness. How much worse is it for children who already have special educational needs and who, even if they had a home, still often cannot access speech and language therapy or other services, an issue we raise here every second day of the week? The entire system of meeting the educational needs of children in crisis is badly broken - as I said this morning to the Taoiseach, beyond broken. I spoke today during Leaders' Questions about Tipperary, a big county 117 miles in length. The Minister has often told me she used to visit the Cahir meat factory in her younger days. There is not a single senior registrar for the child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, in the whole of County Tipperary. Is rud uafásach é sin. It is a scandal. There is not one CAMHS speech and language therapist for the whole of south Tipperary - níl aon duine ann. I welcome this motion and commend those who have brought it before the House.

I wonder what difference it is going to make and what notice the Minister, or the Government, is going to take of it.

The Government is incapable of being embarrassed anymore. It is brushing these issues off and ignoring Opposition motions, even those that have the support of the majority in the House. We saw that with the motion calling for the abolition of the JobPath programme some weeks ago. It was the same with the motion on post offices. That was unanimously accepted, even by the Taoiseach. The Government will ignore that at its peril. This is even worse. Young, sick, vulnerable children are being expected to live in hotel rooms. It is an outrage. History will not be kind to the Minister or the Government on this issue.

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