Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I was to speak on this with my colleague, Deputy Michael Collins, but he is as láthair today and sends his apologies. We badly need reforms right across the education sector from na naíonraí or playschools to third and fourth level. As far as I am concerned, education goes from the cradle to the grave. The Minister of State is very understanding and is always top of her brief. She might come from the same stable as I do in dealing with such matters.

There is a wide range of education available. We mentioned today in speaking about a Bill with the Minister of State's Government colleague, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, the question of public private partnerships. This also applies to schools as well. I have been on the boards of management of vocational education committees and national schools but it all ended when I came to Dáil Éireann in 2007. There have been changes and there is a diverse range of needs to be dealt with and embraced. The job of principals and boards of management remains very important. It is why I said public private partnerships are good.

There is a school in Carrick-on-Suir and the principal, Mr. Kevin Langton, is excellent. The numbers at his school have doubled in the two and half years since it opened. It is a second level VEC school and it is a public private partnership. Beside Mr. Langton's office is the manager's office and the manager has nothing to do with students, tuition or learning. He or she has the job of maintaining the school from the front gate right to the back gate, upstairs, downstairs, inside or wherever else. It does not matter if the problem is a tap, a slate or something happening with the grass. It is a fabulous system. It may be BAM Ireland - I could be wrong - that is the consortium that has it leased. It provided and built it, along with a sister building in Tramore, down the road. It is a magnificent building and addition to the town of Carrick-on-Suir. It serves south Kilkenny, south Tipperary and that part of County Waterford down as far as Portlaw and beyond. There is a special needs unit for people with different learning issues.

I could not believe the sheer size of that state-of-the-art building but this would be useless without an excellent teaching staff under the principal, Mr. Langton. His wonderful staff is expanding all the time. There will be great reports coming from there. The chairman of the board of management is Councillor Kieran Bourke and there is a voluntary board. It is very important to have all those factors working together. Ní neart go chur le chéile. They must all pull and work together. It can be onerous to ask people, such as lay people or local authority or VEC members, to do that job. When I was on the board of Coláiste Dún Iascaigh, Cahir, the Sisters of Mercy had amalgamated the VEC school and the convent, along with St. Joseph's, a school I attended myself. Two pioneers from County Cork, the late Mr. Tom McGrath and Mr. Vincent Russell, cycled on their bikes to the town of Cahir to set up a school with little or no support from the Government. It was a very poor building but some great people came from it. There were great teachers, including a maths and science teacher who is still alive and an-chara liom anois. We can contrast what they operated with - on a shoestring - with what we have now. My brother was a teacher in the VEC sector and it has been well-funded for the past 25 years.

The school in Carrick-on-Suir I referred to was 30 years in the making. The late Councillor Denis Bourke and Councillor Jimmy Hogan, among many others, fought for decades to get it over the line. It is a pity the two other schools did not amalgamate but they chose to stay on their own, namely, the "Greenschool" and the convent. That was their entitlement. In many cases such schools did amalgamate. The schools amalgamated in Cahir and in Lismore out the road over the mountains. They have been working hard together and they are building an extension.

There are two issues with regard to getting people. It will be hard in schools that do not have a system like that. It is the crème de la crèmeof schools' operations because the principal, who does an awful lot of work to look after the teachers and pupils and to deal with the representations from the board of management and the parents' council - he or she looks after the well-being of na daltaí above all - does not have to worry about a light bulb or a leaking roof. However, many school principals have no support whatsoever and must look after everything. They will tell us that they are not qualified for much of that work, especially at national school level. They never set out to be architects, engineers or health and safety officers or to deal with the many issues that go with those roles. I mention three roles, but they also have to be the doctor, the nurse, the specialist and the counsellor. They have to try to bring the teaching staff with them while being responsible for all the children and their parents or guardians. It is an onerous job and it needs to be respected. We should have time for walking principals. While they do not have much time on their hands, to be honest, they should be given time to deal with the never-ending reams of paperwork. Their role has become more bureaucratic with more schemes, rules and regulations. I cannot imagine how they have managed with Covid. I have not set foot inside any school since the Covid pandemic began. I cannot understand how they have managed with that, but they have. They got the exams completed this year. I wish all na daltaí the very best for their results, no matter what model or blend of results they have chosen. I wish them well in the future.

It needs to be recognised that there is no continuity for school secretaries even though they may have been in place for many years. In many cases the secretary is as good as the principal because he or she represents the front line for many of us as parents. Secretaries deal with students and everybody else. We should consider the caretakers too. Mr. Paddy Lonergan, the caretaker in Coláiste Dún Iascaigh, is a wonderful man. A caretaker might be a jack of all trades and master of none, but it is an exceptional and dedicated job. One can imagine being the caretaker on one's own in a school with 830 pupils. It is a huge job. When they want to put on a pantomime or a sports day in the hall, the place is transformed with some help from the students and others. The caretakers must be cognisant of all of the guidelines, rules and regulations around health and safety. It all needs huge evaluation. I have great respect for an tAire Oideachais, an Teachta Foley. The Minister has an understanding of na múinteoirí freisin, and she has a willingness to engage. Like the Minister of State, Deputy Fleming, she is happy to talk about issues and deal with them without the high-powered, highfalutin stuff.

I wish the Minister and the Minister of State well. They make a very good team. There are huge issues to deal with, without even going near the issues in the Educate Together sector and other issues in this area. I am not saying these are not normal issues, but it will always be a task to deal with the normal, straightforward and simple issues that always exist. We have had a plethora of changes to the syllabus in the area of sex education, which is vital and important. I have heard alarm bells about some of the things that have been introduced in the syllabus. I do not mind saying it here. This is the place to say it. I believe the whole push for new issues to be introduced has been too quick. There has been no proper training or resources for school management, teachers, back-up staff or families. Some parents and guardians are not happy about what is happening, and they should be listened to. Bullying is a huge issue in this regard. If they raise their concerns, they are often demonised as backwards or too conservative. They are entitled to raise their children, once they are safely minded and reared. Children in preschool and national school, in particular, should be allowed to develop themselves without being told that they might be something else or being investigated, or told they might be happier if they were something else.

The Minister of State has a great deal on his plate. The slow pace of delivery of new projects is alarming. Roadmaster in Johnstown, which is not far from the Minister of State's own county, is a great facility - I have often used their demountables to house people during a build - but the money that is spent on prefabs and temporary buildings is shocking and mind-boggling. Why can we not grasp it and deal with it? It has mushroomed in the past 30 years. What is paid in rent for these buildings would build schools all over the place, if we could just cut out the rent and put the money into bricks and mortar, public private partnership projects or whatever. I was taught in a prefab and I often went into prefabs when I was speaking to classes and so on. I also attended meetings in prefabs. While some are better than others, generally a prefab is not a suitable building for learning and tuition in which people can disseminate information.

While there are lots of things to be done, if the Minister and the Minister of State could do anything, the full extent of the prefab issue needs to be investigated and understood. Hospitals and many other places are also getting these quick builds. They will not be standing in 20 years. We are solving a short-term problem, but these will not last structurally. I am involved in construction and I know they will not last. The Minister of State also knows they will not last. It is also so hard to heat them, and yet we talk about energy savings. That area is totally left without any proper oversight. We should deal with this. It is like the housing crisis: we should have dealt with this. They were a necessary evil when we did not have the money and a school could get a prefab. Now, however, and even in the boom, we cannot manufacture them fast enough to get them into places. They are not the safest from the perspective of fire safety, which I have not mentioned.

Lifelong learning, from the cradle to the grave, is wonderful. I salute the adult learning schemes of the education and training board in Tipperary and elsewhere. I salute the people who work there, including Mary Roche and Mary Mullaney, and the many people I have worked with, and the way they have engaged with people. This includes getting theory tests. Many fairly senior adults do not have literacy skills because they went through their own education, limited as it was, without anyone ever picking up that they did not have the learning skills, including writing skills, they needed. Many of them are geniuses who can their own businesses and are self-employed. They have that difficulty, however. More funding should be put into further and continuing education to try to ensure more of them are helped. I salute the tutors in this area. I know how difficult it is. There is another múinteoir in Cathair Dún Iascaigh, Niamh Ní Chillín from Baile Átha Cliath, who does a lot of voluntary work with our newcomers, as I call them. We have many of them in Cahir, probably more than one third of the community, and they are being helped to learn the English language.

I would also like to mention Kathleen Ní Loingsigh of the wonderful naíonra i gCathair Dún Iascaigh. I was stunned when I arrived in the square one day and she was putting on a play. I think there were 15 different nationalities there. Some 20 years ago there was only the one nationality, and ten years ago there were maybe only three or four. She said to me that they can learn Irish easier than they can learn English. If a person can learn the Irish language, he or she can learn any language. My own area of Caisleán Nua was a breac-Ghaeltacht up until 1957. My own late seanmháthair did not have any English. Deputies might say that my English is not the best either, but that is fine. It is what I have, but she did not have English. We have a wonderful naíonra in Caisleán Nua, which I was proud to be involved in setting up along with Helen Duggan some years ago. It is flourishing and oversubscribed. It is wonderful. There are 20 jobs in it, and it is in a small village. Cars come from all areas in the morning, over long distances, to come to this flourishing development. It is now in the process of buying an adjoining house to expand. Along with the preschool service, there is an after-school service to mind the children. My own grandchildren, Orlaith, Cara Rose and Aodhán, are ag foghlaim sa naíonra sin. The care they get from Joanne, Mary Dowling and the whole team is second to none. It is a wonderful facility to be in any small village.

There is a wide circumference of all the different aspects of education. When I was in school, and when the Minister of State was in school, national school and secondary school, some of the family might get to university, but now one can embrace the whole remit of services, including the teaching staff and the voluntary boards. I mentioned the nuns earlier. The parish priests, lets us be fair to them, are also stretched as are their boards of management. I would defend them anywhere. People in this House have attacked the parish priests and the nuns. It is fashionable now to attack them. There were a few bad apples, as there are in every society, but I want to defend the sisters. They educated us when we had no schools. Before Tom Mac Craith and Vincent Russell cycled from Cork, the nuns did the educating.

They did it voluntarily. There are such expensive wage bills for schools and hospitals because the sisters are no longer there. I learned so much from them. They were exemplary in their knowledge of teaching and people's experience, dealing with people sensitively and humanely and doing voluntary work on boards and interview panels. We can never forget our history. We must of course look forward, but we can look back to where we came from.

There are many criticisms of the education sector. What has happened in the third level sector over the past year due to Covid is shameful. I have direct experience of this with my youngest daughter, Caelainn. Students had so little life. They had to study online. Money was taken from them. We are lucky and are able to afford to pay, but other people have struggled. On Friday evening, they were told that from Saturday they would not be allowed on campus.

The system of fairness in terms of the student and parent charter is important. A charter for students and education providers is needed. I do not ever demonise landlords. There are some bad ones. People provide infrastructure and take a risk. There must be a student and landlord charter. We recently introduced legislation to cap the charges for deposits. A lot of money is involved. There is pressure on families and students. There must be a charter that respects students. They have enough pressures on them without worrying about rent and everything else. We need such a charter.

The charter for pupils and parents is important but the biggest charter of all for parents and children is teach abhaile, the home. That is where the biggest charter is. That is where contracts are signed and children are born and reared. There are dysfunctional families and difficulties and issues, but that is an area we have to stimulate and nurture. Not everything is a big issue. There are charters for this, that and the other and there is often little common sense. Níos minic, we do not have common sense. Education is a huge area, as I said, from the cradle to the grave. I wish the Minister of State well and support her efforts with this Bill. I thank the Acting Chairman for allowing me to speak.

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