Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will be sharing time with my colleagues, Deputy O'Donoghue and Deputy Michael Collins, if one of them arrives.

I congratulate the Minister and the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, and wish their well on their new roles, as well as their whole teams. Education is so important from the cradle to the grave. I know we are dealing with universities here but it is still important. I hope the funding for this area and the new innovative section in the Department will do well. I am glad to have got news in the last hour that the Taoiseach has said there will be a Cabinet decision on Monday about all schools reopening. They are all expected to reopen, which is wonderful, because it has been a trying time for families, students, teachers, boards of management and parents' councils.

We dealt with a Revised Estimate relating to education last week with the Minister, Deputy Foley, and there was not a shilling in it for the Covid provisions. That is a significant worry, as a person who has served on boards of management at all levels of education, including a naíonra, a national school and a second level institution. They worry because of the shoestring budgets, and I welcome the funding last night for the minor works schemes for all schools. There are always jobs to be done in schools, and the boards of management are faced with decisions about how they can spend money or are not able to spend money. They should not have to worry about basic repairs. It should be done by the Department of Education and Skills.

I want to ask the Minister of State about the new role. The Minister, Deputy Harris, was on my local radio this morning in Clonmel. He mentioned some health projects that he was involved with. We set up a third level institution 20 years ago or more, the Tipperary Rural and Business Development Institute. That has since been moved into Limerick Institute of Technology Tipperary. We are the tail. We are not getting the recognition, supports or investment that we deserve in Tipperary. There were promises with the amalgamation but they are not happening. We have difficulties with relocating from the present site. The building was built in three months and is not suitable. It would be more suited to being a farm or an industrial building than a university. We hope to move to the old site at Kickham Barracks in Clonmel. The present site and the bypass can be used for many other things. We need to have proper leadership. I have paid tribute in the past to the lecturers and people who do great work there. We need to have the supports. We have a brain drain of lecturers and such. When there is not a proper emphasis and focus on having the Tipperary section of LIT being equal, people will vote with their feet and move to where there are the resources, recognition and so on. We need to be acutely aware of this.

There are many issues that debar people from going into third level education. Being from rural Ireland, people are at a significant disadvantage. I thank the people who handle SUSI grants. They have been helpful after being thrown in at the deep end to run it. Students are often disqualified because of 1 km or because of how the travel distance is measured for access grants and travel grants. There are significant anomalies and it is unfair on the students who want to go to third level education. Their parents want to send them there and the community and country need them to have these degrees and the education, but because of sheer financial constraints, they cannot do it. We need recognition that people in rural areas are just as entitled to have a third level education as the people in cities. I do not begrudge people in cities with all the choice and the transport services that they have. We do not have the transport services and we have a meagre grant system to give them assistance to go half a kilometre. It is often measured differently and there are disputes about it, then they are ruled out. This is a substantial setback to students who want to further educate themselves and to play a part in our ever-growing economy. That anomaly needs to be sorted out because it is putting significant pressure on parents, especially if they did not get the grants.

I addressed a matter earlier in my comments to the Minister for Health about student nurses, whether they are general or psychiatric nurses, who came out to join the front-line services in this crisis and have not got funded. They have received some belated funding at assistants' rate of pay, which I recognise, but they are also losing out, as are students in all colleges this summer, on Easter work, summer work and evening work, because everything is closed down. Significant pressure is placed on parents, especially parents who do not take any grants to try to pay and support their children in college. There is significant peer pressure too. It is awfully frustrating. The stimulus fund could not deal with that but we need to have an education fund announced next week or when we come back to Revised Estimates. I am surprised that the Minister had not included the Covid fund in the Revised Estimates because they need to be supported, because they will go back to college empty-handed in September, if they do go back to college in September, which we hope they will. Students cost a lot of money when they are at home and cannot get out to work, because they are an extra expense on the family home. It is well known from surveys that they spend more when they are off and they have to eat and to live when they are at home. It is not free.

I hope and pray that the Minister of State will deal with the matter of apprenticeships in an aggressive fashion. In the aftermath of the so-called crash and the recovery and the boom, we no longer have apprentices. A school building programme is being rolled out and there is funding for minor works but small builders cannot get the carpenters, plumbers, bricklayers or electricians - or sparks as we call them. It is the whole range, and we need them badly. Teagasc must be brought in, as stated earlier, to deliver courses in mechanics for machinery operators, for example. There is a huge problem in the contracting business because one cannot get skilled operators. The mechanisms in tractors are computerised now and a person would need to have a third level degree to drive and understand them. We need apprenticeships. The contractors of Ireland have been looking for a number of years to get people back into that. Not all people will be working behind a desk or at a computer. We need people also to work on machinery, on construction sites and with construction equipment, and we need to understand that.

Teagasc needs a total revamp. I hope the Department of Education and Skills and Teagasc can link with each other to spend the money more prudently and wisely. We have to be new and innovative, and we must challenge ourselves and our young people. No one relishes a challenge more than young people. Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí is the old adage. I am not saying that they are all young but younger people are going into business. We need those people in research and development and we need them in all kinds of positions.

I received a CV from a young man in Tipperary who attended Trinity College and who was looking for an internship or some temporary work. His CV was mind-boggling in terms of the number of extracurricular courses he took and degrees he was awarded when in Trinity College. He had also done various jobs in the students' union with student representatives, summer work and placements. He excelled in all of them. Employers value these students and know they want to learn and get ahead.

As I have said, Teagasc must be completely reformed. Agriculture is ever-changing, especially now in light of the green economy. Young people and young farmers are up to the challenge. Farmers in general have been up to the challenge of dealing with carbon issues and so on, but they need the supports. I put it to the Minister of State that, like it or lump it, this is one of the many issues in the area of education.

We now have three super junior Ministers. There was a furore when this happened back in the 1980s, and a more recent furore when one super junior was appointed. Now there are three, and one of them is not even a Member of this House. I am aware that the particular location in which we find ourselves is only a temporary home, but I am referring to the Dáil. One of the new super junior Ministers was appointed to the Seanad. While there is scope in the Constitution to do this, attempting to insist on a higher salary sticks in the craws of people who are trying to survive. It sticks in the craw of those people we have spoken of who want to send their children back to college and who are under enormous pressure because the children could not get the summer or night-time jobs they would normally have had. This is a major issue. We might think it will all be lost in Covid payments and everything else, but we want to show example to the people who are suffering out there, people who want to engage in and embrace the change during these new times. We must be very careful with this. It is just not fair or right. I will not single out who she is, but she is a member of the Green Party and a Senator, and along with the other two other super junior Ministers at Cabinet, she will receive an increase of more than €16,000, which does not sit right with me, my constituents or the people.

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