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

Gabhaim buíochas le mo chomhghleacaithe go léir a thóg páirt sa díospóireacht seo inniu agus a thaispeáin go raibh spéis acu san ábhar seo. I thank my colleagues who spoke and showed an interest in this motion. We are appealing to the Government to get interested in this. Fine Gael has shown time and again its lack of interest, with only a Minister and Minister of State speaking today, and the record of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education and Skills will show that too. That is part of the problem.

The only thing this Minister has done was to go in at the last possible moment to the Taoiseach's constituency, using powers that the previous Minister did not want but which we forced him to take on, to tell schools to open classes, although some of the schools were willing to do so and had classes open already. By and large those classes are not yet open. The Ministers have never put that on the record. The special school that was announced is not yet open either. The idea that this is some sort of victory for children with special needs is wrong. Many of these children needed that school last year and certainly at the start of the school term this year.

The parents in the constituencies of Deputies O'Callaghan and Lahart, as well as in Cork, Kildare and other parts of the country, including my constituency, also need schools. The 800 or so children who are receiving home tuition or are in other private educational institutions using home tuition grants, need, and most of them want, to be in State schools with the appropriate resources. If I were Minister for Education and Skills, I would be sitting at a table and banging it to find out what is going on for next September and trying to plan for that or, as our motion proposes, for five years' time. That is what we are looking for, not to have the mad dash in which this Government has engaged. It is an outrageous way to deal with children.

There seems to be no way to plan ahead, which is what our motion seeks. The Government repeatedly tells us about the resources but that is the easy part. It is not right, as Deputy Michael McGrath noted, that in Cork some children must travel for 40 minutes through traffic to go to school, while in my constituency, one child travels 15 miles one way and his sibling travels a similar distance in the other direction. It adds to cost and stress and it is arguable that such children are not in the ideal place because they should attend their local school. The Government needs to get to grips with the issue, relieve parents of the stress and ensure that the constitutional rights of all the children of the country, which Eamon de Valera rightly inserted in the Constitution, are vindicated. Children should receive the education that is appropriate for them and to which they are entitled.

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