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

I welcome the Ministers of State. I am a little bit taken aback by the Minister of State's address as it appeared she wanted to inform the House that everything is basically okay, that everything is fine, that Government is on top of things and that there is nothing to see here. Anybody who understands the education system well, and particularly how it interacts with the health system, will know that there were very significant problems before the pandemic. If the Minister of State were to stand up, acknowledge that and say that she appreciates that there are issues and that she is going to work with every agency, with the Opposition and with families and communities to resolve them rather than read out a list of ticked boxes to show how great the Government is doing, we might actually believe she is in a position to bring about great changes.

I will fill her in on the reality of my constituents, who are waiting years for their children to get basic assessments and basic interventions. They do not have a right to automatic placement in a primary school. They get a list of schools from the special educational needs organiser and are basically told to fend for themselves. We also have an issue which has become quite profound over the course of the pandemic. As I hope the Minister of State will understand, children with special educational needs have been profoundly affected by the lack of in-school learning. On that basis, although the pandemic is clearly not the Government's fault, it is the Government's responsibility to respond with a fund, investment or vision to catch these children up. We are not going to heal the scars of the last year and a half with a summer programme.

I mentioned this to the Tánaiste earlier. Two weeks ago, the Minister for Education announced her intention to establish a multimillion euro catch-up fund for children for next year. There has been an enormous political row in the UK over the level of the catch-up fund announced in England. The person who was responsible for distributing that fund resigned on the basis that it was only £1.4 billion. It appears that this Government feels that, if we can make a little bit of an investment over the summer, we need no real radical overhaul of how the system presents itself to families and to children and no radical overhaul or investment with regard to class sizes, what children are going through or the level of campaigning parents have to undertake, and the exhaustion they have to experience, to get basic services. All of us, including myself, are dealing with parents in our constituencies. I have been speaking to Senator Bacik about parents in Dublin 2, Dublin 4, Dublin 6 and Dublin 6 West who cannot get a unit for their children. The State seems unable to stand up for these families or to interact proactively with patron bodies to ensure children can get access to these services in the areas they are from. I suggest to the Minister of State that there are major holes in the system and that they existed before the pandemic. What we need from Government is a multimillion euro investment in the education system that will attempt, first of all, to repair the scars of the last year and a half and, second, will move us towards a system that is more reflective of the education system of a modern European republic.

The issues I am raising are real. The exhaustion of families is real. The lack of services is real. The waiting lists are real. In my part of the world, children are waiting so long for basic interventions that they become no longer eligible for those interventions and so have to go on another waiting list. All the while, there is a hint, sense or feeling that the system is begging people to get these services privately because they can then be taken off the list and will no longer be the system's problem. As I am sure the Minister of State will know, only a certain number of families have the means to do so. I again suggest to the Minister of State that, rather than standing up and giving a self-congratulatory speech on how everything is going fine, thank you very much, she should realise the level of scarring in Irish society and that it will take a massive package to allow some children and families to catch up to where they would like to be. We could then have a proper discussion with regard to where we were before the pandemic hit, when the system certainly was not serving children with disabilities or their families in any way that would be commensurate with what we should expect in a proper republic.

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