Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Cian O'Callaghan made the first point regarding the No End in Site report. First, the report is a shocking indictment of all concerned in terms of the failure to develop plans for both the halting site itself and the housing that will be needed to deal with all of the residents. The site is far too overcrowded and there have been many issues with it for a long time. In my view, the council needs to take actions and decisions and implement them. Not everybody will be satisfied and happy with those decisions. My understanding, and I will be reverting to the council on this, is there have been lots of different initiatives and plans produced over time but they have not brought a resolution. The consequence of that failure to get a resolution to a lot of the issues is children living in absolutely unacceptable conditions in terms of health, hygiene, quality of life and so forth. It is absolutely unacceptable and the local authority will have to move decisively now in response to the ombudsman's report.

On Deputy Ó Ríordáin's point regarding catch-up funding for schools, the €40 million allocated for the summer is a good and expanded initiative primarily dealing with special needs provision during the summer months but also with children who have been educationally disadvantaged because of Covid. The Minister is looking at the next school year with a view to integrating additional supports to help students who may have fallen behind or who need additional supports arising out of the impact of Covid-19. It is a very important and serious issue and the Minister is taking it seriously. The Minister has also taken a benign approach to the reallocation of teachers generally to schools across the country and many of them have retained teachers. Of course, the pupil-teacher ratio was reduced in the last budget, which was a significant move in itself, fulfilling a commitment we made in the programme for Government. It is something we were very anxious to get movement on quickly. Again, we will look at education in a favourable light, notwithstanding the challenges facing us from a budget perspective as we continue, we hope, our cautious and significant reopening of society.

Obviously, education is critical. We showed our prioritisation of education by getting our schools back last September. A huge effort was made by all of the teams in schools, from parents to teachers, special needs assistants, SNAs, school staff, principals and education and training boards, ETBs, right across the board, as well as all the communities wishing them on.

We got hit with the third wave, we got the schools back up again and now we must ensure we can settle it down in the next school year. We must do this in order to give the kids every opportunity we possibly can to grow and develop and overcome whatever negative impact Covid might have had on quite a number of students. I have no doubt it impacted on their development, their overall well-being and their educational attainment itself.

Deputy Boyd Barrett raised the arts sector. In the sector the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, is working on the idea of a universal basic income and is doing some other work on that with other Departments including the Department of Social Protection to see what type of scheme could be developed. I do not have the specifics of the working conditions or pay that apply to the Disney production, "Enchanted 2". There may be an alternative view to the one the Deputy articulated and I am conscious of that. Quite a number of times he makes observations and others do not often get the chance to defend themselves or respond. There could very well be an alternative narrative to the one the Deputy has described. Suffice it to say that all the regulatory frames governing pay and conditions should be adhered to and all the basic conditions the State insists on should be adhered to. There is no excuse on productions of this kind for workers, artists or dancers to be left short-changed. That should not happen because the purpose of such investments, of the facilitation of film-making in Ireland, is to provide quality employment to people working in the arts right across the board-----

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