Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I express my gratitude to all sides of the House for supporting this motion. The result should be some action. I accept what colleagues have said. All of us, and certainly those of us in this party, want to end child homelessness. I agree with the statements that have been made to the effect that we do not want child homelessness and that we cannot afford as a society to normalise it. The truth is that we are dealing with a reality today that must be addressed, yet the educational issues relating to homelessness are not being addressed.

We all remember the case of a young lady who spoke on "Morning Ireland" last year. Amanda was a student preparing for her exams. She had spent two years living in a hotel room with her mother, her brother and her older sister, who returned to the family from college at weekends. She described her experience in the most visceral of terms, speaking of the impact of her situation on her long-term future and how it could stop her from going to college and so on.

A large body of work is required to addressed the ongoing homelessness and housing crisis. While the specific proposals in this motion are limited in scope, their target is to address the long-term harm that could otherwise result.

I will severely criticise a number of the points made by the Minister, Deputy McHugh, but I also acknowledge that the Minister of State has indicated that she will bring many of the issues raised back to the Department. The Minister claimed that it was not correct of our motion to assert there was no policy, but it was. There is no policy on this matter. He pointed to the fact that the Department of Education and Skills had been invited late last year to join the inter-agency group. That is welcome and I would have accepted an amendment to that effect, but it only happened late last year and the crisis is growing larger and larger. The Department's statement of strategy references the inter-agency group but prioritises student homelessness. While the Department is right to focus on that important issue in its consideration of homelessness, there is no strategy to deal with the homelessness of schoolchildren and its impact on their educational attainment. It is not right for the Minister to come to the House and state that there is.

There is no strategy or policy. There is simply a reference to everything else that is going on in the Department. I am told that homeless children are included because it refers to all children and that everyone who attends a school under the DEIS programme will benefit but that is not the point at all. There needs a much greater focus from the Department and it is not good enough to say that the innovative approaches to education in the action plan include all children. That is not good enough.

The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh, after setting out the limited actions that his Department has taken, spoke about DEIS. One of the main points of this motion is that DEIS does not cover a significant number of the students involved. We acknowledge the supports that are provided through DEIS, and there should be more and we will come back to that at some point in this Dáil, but one of the points of the motion is that DEIS supports are simply not available to a sizeable amount of these children.

The idea that NEPS is routinely available to homeless children is not the case. Deputy Burton stated that the counselling service and the school retention service, which I do not think is directly related to homelessness, are under threat. The latter is delivered through Tusla and not the Department of Education and Skills. NEPS psychologists are certainly stretched beyond their capacity and I cannot imagine that they are giving much in the way of assistance to schools. It is misleading of the Government to state that they are.

I am glad the Minister indicated that he will look at July provision. That is being reviewed at the moment. It needs to be looked at and that is what the motion seeks. The motion looks for July provision to be considered in the cases of children who have missed significant amounts of school time.

When the Minister moved on from describing what his Department is doing, which I say is not much, he proceeded to refer to what the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, is doing. There was mention of transport across Dublin but that is not the point. The transport situation in rural areas, where these children are increasingly based perhaps because they are moving from Dublin, is absolutely chronic because they have to travel miles to get to school. That is preventing them getting to school at all or on time and that is the whole point of the motion. A totally different focus needs to be taken by the Department.

The Minister of State referred to Tusla's education and welfare service and the sooner that is merged with the Department of Education and Skills the better because there is a lack of joined-up thinking.

I compliment the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Zappone, on the work she has done. She has only a small Department but she has done her bit by placing some focus on this issue. There has been none of that in the Department of Education and Skills.

The Minister of State spoke about the school meals programme operated by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. That has its purpose, of course, but is not targeted at homeless children and we want to ensure that homeless children who are in danger of not having meals and unable to take part in the school day to the fullest extent possible have their needs met. That needs to be done whether through the Department of Education and Skills, the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection or both. It should be raised by the Department of Education and Skills at the inter-agency meetings. I would like to see the Department of Education and Skills putting items on the agenda at those meetings rather than just being there as a new member which was only invited along late last year.

We are making the choice to limit the potential of these children if we do not proactively tackle this problem. We are not equipping them with the skills they need to survive and thrive. We are, in effect, locking them into a cycle of poverty. If education lifted us out of the poverty of this country, the lack of it can mire people in poverty. We need to educate our people and ensure that everybody has the opportunity to be educated fully and properly.

On a side topic, the scandal of reduced hours in schools needs to be addressed. There are homeless children suffering as a result of reduced hours but those reductions also apply to children with special needs and others. The Minister for Education and Skills stated in reply to me yesterday, and I repeat it, that no school is entitled to shorten the school day for any child and children who are homeless should not have a shortened school day because of their family circumstances or the transport difficulties they face.

The experiences that homeless children are dealing with are already understood. Deputies Boyd Barrett and Paul Murphy referred to the long-term, incurable scarring effects of those experiences and I accept that. Longitudinal data from the US shows that homelessness impacts on behaviour, employability, relationships and brain development. We cannot allow this situation to continue.

It is welcome that the Government is not opposing the motion but I would rather it had simply amended it to point out that Department of Education and Skills had joined the inter-agency group last December. The Government might make a genuine effort to look at these issues and think of itself as a driver in this area and does not simply depend on Tusla, the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, NEPS, particularly in areas where it effectively does not have a presence, or the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. We need much more proactivity.

I welcome that the Minister of State has said that she will go back to the Department and take up these issues because they are brought here in a spirit of genuine constructive debate and on foot of the Children's Rights Alliance. That alliance is not a political organisation but represents many organisations around the country which are dealing with these issues on a day-to-day basis. It has access to some of the best researchers in the country.

I welcome Mr. John Boyle from the Irish National Teachers Organisation, INTO, and representatives of the Children's Rights Alliance to the Gallery. I thank them all for what they are doing. I hope this motion has shone a light on their work. I encourage anyone listening to the debate to read the Home Works report because it is searing to read the experiences of those children.

I have spoken to principals today and the whole issue of special needs, and especially children who are homeless with special education needs, is dreadful. The discontinuity of education is a major problem which has not really been addressed by anybody. These children have to repeatedly stop and start their education which is an extra burden above and beyond their colleagues who do not have traditional special educational needs. I think it is agreed by everybody that homelessness is a special educational need where it leads to gaps and breaks in a child's education or the shortening thereof. We have a duty, as a Legislature and Parliament, and the Government has a duty to respond to it much more thoroughly.

I thank everyone for their support. Fianna Fáil will certainly be pursuing this, as will the voluntary organisations, the NGOs, the Children's Rights Alliance and their members, and the teachers' unions and I encourage them to do so. They have seen that they have the support of everyone in the Dáil tonight and they will want to see action on that.

I again thank all my colleagues for supporting this motion. I also thank Mr. Shane Smyth in the Fianna Fáil research office for his support and work. I look forward to seeing results and, as everyone has said, let us end child homelessness.

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