Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Like the previous speaker, I will use my time to put a few matters on record. I can liaise with the Minister at a later date. She knows better than me that young people have suffered disproportionately throughout the Covid crisis. Everybody has suffered and it is difficult for everybody, but I believe young people, both primary and secondary school pupils, have suffered a great deal and have often been wrongly fingered for a proportion of blame when there were outbreaks of the coronavirus. Other speakers have alluded to the level of stress. The Minister appreciates better than me that in any household that has a child in an examination year, be it the junior or leaving certificate, it affects the entire family. The family is invested in the effort to ensure the environment is correct to support the child in his or her studies as he or she prepares for the role he or she will play in the future.

With that in mind, I have one request today. I do not have the expertise that is held by the Minister and her advisers in liaising with pupil representative groups, the teaching unions, principals and so forth as to what is the best approach to take for the examination years, both junior certificate and particularly leaving certificate, but my appeal, and as Deputy Cathal Crowe, who is also a teacher, rightly pointed out, is that whatever we do, we should decide it immediately, which means in the next few weeks. I had the opportunity last evening to point out some of the failings so far in the vaccination programme and the improvements that must be made. That is a variable the Minister's Department cannot control unilaterally. With all the stress these pupils and their teachers have had to go through over the past year, we owe them, at least, to inform them of whatever decision we take with regard to examination years and to take that decision in the next fortnight to three weeks, at the latest. I am told by many of the Minister's former colleagues in the teaching profession that if it gets near what would have been the February mid-term break, it will be too late. Sadly, I do not believe we can depend on the vaccination programme to be as far progressed as we would like to facilitate a full return to school and normal junior certificate and leaving certificate examinations. For that reason, I ask the Minister to move immediately to ensure a decision is taken, and preferably in the next fortnight.

I welcome that she is seeking, with consultation, to secure the return of special needs education and special classes in mainstream schools. That is a relief for many and, hopefully, it can be done safely. I thank her for this opportunity and I hope she will take my points on board.

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