Dáil debates

Thursday, 5 November 2020

Education (Admission to Schools) (Amendment) Bill 2020: Second Stage [Private Members]

 

5:20 pm

Photo of Duncan SmithDuncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I will be sharing time with Deputy Ó Ríordáin if he arrives in time, or I would appreciate it if the Ceann Comhairle would put him on the slate for contributions. The Labour Party has presented this short, simple Bill which we believe to be very important. We are disappointed that the Government has chosen to submit an amendment to further consider it because that will kick it down the road for 12 months. We do not see a need for that. We feel that is a device that has crept into how the Government is reacting to good, well thought out Bills. This legislation has been designed to attack and change something that is at the very heart of Irish society, that is, the issue of privilege as it relates to education.

As the Minister is aware, the Education Act 1998 provides that 25% of places for any given year can be held for the children and grandchildren of past pupils of a particular school. I deal with a number of schools in my own constituency, including community schools, Educate Together schools and Gaelscoileanna. This admissions policy is never used by those schools but is used predominantly by fee-paying schools. It is about intergenerational privilege and about passing down the school tie and crest. The knock-on effect of this policy when it is applied in a school in Dublin, for example, is that people who move to Dublin from anywhere else in the country, or from another country, are automatically at a disadvantage if they would like to send their children to such a school.

This is something that needs to change and should change. We feel that such a change would have broad support. We hope it will have broad support across the House. This kind of privilege and elitism needs to be tackled anywhere we find it. We spent the majority of this week dealing with issues of privilege and access. I refer to the discussion about the Tánaiste and GPs, which came up today on Leaders' Questions. Privilege was at the very heart of that debate. When it comes to our schooling and education system, and I am not an expert on this, we know that there is privilege within it. This Bill, as short and succinct as it is, goes a long way in tackling that.

In proposing this legislation, the Labour Party is asking the Minister to withdraw her amendment and to allow the Bill to advance to Committee Stage. The Minister is proposing her amendment on the basis that it will allow the Government to consider the Bill and bring it back in a year. This Bill, like other Bills, can be considered on Committee Stage. Schools will still be able to consider their own admissions policies for next year. We are under no illusions that this Bill will fly through the House. There is nothing flying through the House from the Opposition during this Dáil. We are all aware of that. I ask the Minister to allow this Bill to go through, to be put in the queue, to proceed to Committee Stage, to be thrashed out by the education spokespersons at the Select Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and to go through due process. I ask her not to continue this new Government device of kicking things nine or 12 months down the road. This will create backlogs that the Government will not be able to clear and will make for bad Parliament, substandard procedure and poor legislation. I will be interested to hear the thoughts of the other spokespersons in the House and of the Minister.

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