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

It is fair to say that while I have been accepting of the decisions of the Department of Education and Skills in this crisis I am not best pleased by its approach over recent weeks. The Minister mentioned a briefing for Deputies on 1 April. When he spoke in Irish he mentioned the good relations among parties in the House and, yes, we have spoken on several occasions. I asked for a briefing two weeks ago and was promised it by telephone but it never happened. The Department of Health runs regular briefings for Deputies but the Department of Education and Skills has not done that. A lot of what has happened and the mistakes that have been made could have been avoided with more political engagement.

The one thing that students need is clarity. The reason they do not have that is the constant stream of leaks from the Department of Education and Skills which are adding to great uncertainty. I believe the Minister was forced into his Good Friday decision by the fact that there was an unauthorised leak to The Irish Times. I wish no disrespect to the journalists, who are doing their jobs, and indeed the Taoiseach referred on Instagram to postponing the leaving certificate before anybody knew about it. Since then the Minister for Health has been musing about schools possibly returning for a day a week and the Minister for Education and Skills made an announcement on Good Friday about the junior certificate, which seems to have been supplanted by what the Department is saying unofficially to RTÉ that there will be no State-certified exams. That is not what he said when he gave his decision on Good Friday. This uncertainty has to end. I have been pleading with the Minister to end it for some time but it has not ended yet. It is lethal and very discouraging to students.

The voids are real. Not many families have multiple laptops for students to use. In our house the kids are fighting over laptops. They are only in primary school. I do not know what it would be like for a family with a kid doing the leaving certificate or one with a kid doing with leaving certificate and another doing junior certificate, and other kids trying to study too. I know of teachers living at home with their parents, as many young teachers do, where there is hardly any broadband.

They do not have the access necessary to enable them to teach their students. It is difficult and the kids are losing out.

While the Minister's plan for the junior certificate seems to have unravelled to some extent, I hope that he has a good, solid plan B in place for the leaving certificate. The goalposts keep changing. When he made his decision on Good Friday and announced it, I assumed that he was acting on the basis of public health advice. I asked for that advice but have not received it. The public health advice received by the Department asserting that the exams could go ahead in the late summer and early autumn, or the manner in which they would take place, has never been publicised. Since then, there have been briefings to education partners trying to work all of that out.

I accept that we are in an emergency and I have been accepting of the decisions made, but the Department of Education and Skills has not handled this to the best extent possible. It was slow to recognise the reality of broadband, socioeconomic and other divides. Some kids simply do worse outside a classroom setting. All Deputies raised these issues on 1 April, particularly that of broadband and devices. An announcement was made yesterday, which was three weeks later, on this matter, but that will take some time to implement.

What is the Minister's plan for the leaving certificate? Is it happening? Has the Minister worked out a plan B? Has he considered that the ultimate purpose of the leaving certificate is to show that students have finished school and allow them to enter college on a fair and transparent basis? There are other ways of doing it and we have supported what the Department has been doing, but it has been frustrating to see the constant stream of leaks in newspapers. If that has been frustrating for me, as a Deputy, then the frustration felt by the students doing the exams is multiple times that which I have experienced.

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