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

We welcome this debate but every time the Minister or the Minister of State get an opportunity to speak about this issue, they only make things worse. I am inclined not to ask any questions because the answers will just make things worse. The Labour Party has been trying to de-escalate this issue over recent days, but it is clear that the Minister and her Minister of State have lost control of the situation. Some of the Minister's statements are making the situation irretrievable, so I think I need to set the record straight.

The Minister decided to make an announcement on 6 January about the return to school with no consultation in the middle of the highest infection rate in the world. All of us in the Opposition encouraged her to seek options for the return to school of those with additional needs, those who were vulnerable and those who were disadvantaged. If she had made those efforts and they came to naught with the best of intentions, she would have had no criticism from us. She then made another announcement a week ago amid great fanfare and self-congratulation all over the place, with no agreement. Then a letter was sent to every school in the country, again with no agreement. Inevitably, it fell apart last Tuesday when the Minister was apparently at a Fianna Fáil webinar at 7 o'clock. Then we went into an overdrive of unbelievable media management by Government. Whatever chance there was of recovering the situation was blown out of the water. We had a particularly ill-advised, bad-tempered communication from the Department that evening. Meanwhile, the unions were saying they still wanted to be at the table. The Minister of State, who has form in this regard and can rarely be let out without punching down on some vulnerable group, be it Travellers or those with addiction issues, followed on from a crass statement last week by going on national radio and making a comparison with mother and baby homes. Even in the past 24 hours, another Minister of State said on national radio that he is getting tired listening to unions setting themselves up as health experts and said the same thing on local radio this morning.

The Minister has the audacity to tell us the unions are not following public health advice when her Government did not do that in December. For all of us who are trying to be constructive and focus the issue back on where it is supposed to be, nobody in Government has helped this at all. They have made it worse and worse and worse. Every interview, statement, press release and speech in this House has made it worse. It is as if they have decided to pick a side.

I am at the point now of urging the Ministers not to say anything else, to return to the negotiating table and realise why they are here in the first place and to focus on the fact that the enemy is not teachers or SNAs. The enemy is the virus. The virus is the reason young people with additional needs are not in school.

If the Government were to focus on that, we might actually get somewhere. What it has attempted to do, however, in poorly chosen language, poorly chosen press releases, poorly chosen statements and appalling rhetoric in interviews, is to make it worse and worse. It is putting in jeopardy not only the possibility of children and young people with additional needs returning to school but the entire project of getting back to school because it has burned every bridge it has come across.

I have no questions, a Cheann Comhairle, because I am worried the answers would make matters worse. My only suggestion to the Minister and the Minister of State, and to the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, who has appeared on national and local radio in the past 24 hours, is to stop saying anything in public. Let them say what they have to say in private with those unions that have also committed to doing the same, and then we might have a roadmap for achieving what we all want to achieve, namely, education being delivered for those who need it most.

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