Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Our grandparents' generation, particularly our grandmothers, used to say that education was no burden. Some 80 or 90 years ago, a child might well have come to the kitchen table at age 12, 13 or 14 to tell of an offer of a job in a factory or on the docks, which was a chance to leave school and go into employment.

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The mothers of those families - our grandmothers - would say that education is no burden. Not only is it not a burden, but is also the great liberator which saves families from poverty and young people from disadvantage. It gives them the life chance they need to maximise their potential. The tragedy of education is that so many people fall through its cracks. In Ireland, one third of primary school children in disadvantaged schools leave with basic reading problems, and 17.9% of our adult population is functionally illiterate. If one compares two three year olds, one from a disadvantaged family and one from an advantaged or regular family, the disadvantaged three year old has one third of the oral language capacity of the advantaged one. That is 400 words versus 1,200 words, before they come anywhere near a school gate. In America, where the prison system has been privatised, the prisons predict how much spare capacity and prison cells they will need in 15 years by looking at the literacy rates of ten year olds in their districts.

Education is absolutely the great liberator. The most powerful thing in the world, which can change not just a village or a family but an entire country, is a girl with a book. That is why it is so infuriating, dispiriting and upsetting to see education and those who work and believe in it being so disrespected in the last number of months. SNAs had to endure a bungled redeployment programme. Teachers, principals and parents listened to Minister after Minister giving different advice and sound bites about the potential for reopening schools. We had the spectre of blended learning hanging over us for the entire summer. Then we had the leaving certificate and student representatives hearing about the delay in leaving certificate results in the media.

The package the Minister has produced is welcome. All of us have a responsibility to speak positively about the potential for this package to open schools because if we do not open them next month or in September, we are going to lose an entire generation of vulnerable young people who are not legally required to be in school if they are over 16 years of age. Schools and teachers have been much maligned by people writing columns in newspapers who do not have a cat's clue what it is like to work in a school or with a vulnerable young person. Teachers are holding schools, and sometimes families, together by their fingernails and often ensure that young people do not make the wrong choice at the wrong time. They have been holding on to a whole generation of 16 and 17 year olds while they have been out of the school buildings and hoping, praying and encouraging them to come back in September. If we lose that generation, we will most likely lose them forever. That is a burden on them, and on all of us.

This package has to work and we want it to, but we have grave problems with some of its elements, which we hope the Minister can address over the next few weeks. The lateness of the package is not the Minister's fault and I would not necessarily blame Fianna Fáil for it either because it has only been in office for a few weeks. However, myself, Deputies Ó Laoghaire and Gannon, representatives from other political parties and members of the Covid-19 committee have been calling for a package for months. We asked for it in April, May and June and we asked again this month. It has arrived and it is substantial. However, principals have said to me that it should have come with a magic wand because they need to magic up some teachers and school buildings that do not exist. It is our collective responsibility as politicians to show a little bit of leadership, to provide some certainty, and to suggest to the Irish people that this can work and that we can open schools. It is not just about opening schools, but ensuring they stay open as well.

I spoke earlier about disrespect and how SNAs, teachers, parents and education have been disrespected. This package suggests that special educational needs teachers will be used as substitutes. That is not just disrespectful to the profession they lead and the work they do keeping vulnerable students in touch and connected with education, but it is also disrespectful to those young people who need the individual attention and special educational expertise those teachers provide. Suggesting that they can just be shifted over to a substitute position is unfair and disrespectful and it cannot work.

As regards the transport situation, I understand that parents have to apply for school transport for their children by this Friday. Some 120,000 children and young people, 14,200 of whom have special educational needs, use this service. However, the school transport operators are in no position to make a firm commitment this week or by this Friday on whether they can do the job. The least we can do is delay the date by which parents have to apply for that transport scheme. That is another practical suggestion for the Minister.

I refer again to education being no burden and being a great liberator. Education is a life chance for young people to be everything they can possibly be and we, as a collective and an Oireachtas, cannot get this wrong. When the Government holds its Citizens' Assembly on education, which we support and want to be constructive within, we have to deal with the disrespect that has been shown to education down through the generations. We must also address the fact that it is not funded enough, that our class sizes are some of the highest in Europe, that our literacy rates are a national scandal and that we could do so much more if we realised the eternal power of education.

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