Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I understand that this is a technical issue. It is important that we discuss the issues around the provision of services for children in education and how they support students and their families. I worked for the school completion programme for 16 years and for Tusla for four years until I was elected. I am very proud to have worked for both organisations. They continue to provide an incredible service to young people and their families. I still have strong links with many of the people that I worked with.

I strongly believe that there must be continued close collaboration between the school completion programme, educational welfare officers and the home-school community liaison. Furthermore and importantly, there also needs to be continued close collaboration with other agencies, particularly in relation to Meitheal and how that operates. I would like to know how this will be actioned into the future. With the move from Tusla to the Department of Education, it is critically important that those connections are kept.

I started off in the early school leaver initiative, which commenced in 1999 and which was the forerunner of the school completion programme. In the beginning, the essence of the early school leaver initiative and the school completion programme was around working from the ground up. It was not a top-down project. The idea was that each individual community and school had the autonomy to be able to deliver a programme that suited the needs of the children and students at the time. I hope that the Department of Education will allow this to happen as it will have oversight and give direction in the area.

It would be remiss of me not to mention resourcing. I know that many Deputies have raised the issue of resources. I am concerned that the funding is being transferred from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to the Department of Education. I am concerned about how that is going to operate and how it will be ensured that appropriate funding is provided. Members will recall that during the collapse of the so-called Celtic tiger, funding for the school completion programme was cut by over 30%. What that really meant was that we lost project workers, which resulted in a lack of one-to-one connection with students. That is how you build up a relationship with somebody. If somebody is struggling in school, you build up trust and a relationship with them and work to be able to support them.

I am not sure what is happening with the clock; it seems to be going a bit awry. I think it is trying to catch up with me in the context of how quickly I am trying to get through this. Perhaps I will get a bit of leeway if there is time.

Deputies mentioned services for children. These are critical, particularly as there are so many students. I am speaking as somebody who worked in the area. I worked day in, day out in schools across Coolock and the Darndale area. Trying to connect people to services was a nightmare. In the context of early intervention and school age teams, when a parent believes that something is not quite right and they go for an early intervention, they should not be told that there is a two- or a two-and-a-half-year waiting list. They may find themselves going through early intervention and getting the assessment, only for the child to age out of the early intervention system on reaching five. The child will then transfer to the school age team and the parent may be told that there is another two-and-a-half-year waiting list. As a result, from the time that the parent believes the something is just not right to the time they get access to a service, it could be four, five or six years. The whole essence of early intervention is early intervention. It is what it says on the tin. Unfortunately, however, the resources are not there to be able to deal with that.

I want to mention one particular service. It is a service for teenagers who have additional needs and are on the spectrum. They still do not have access to a full service yet. We are opening pubs, nightclubs and restaurants fully, yet parents trying to access a service in Dublin 15 have been told that it is not ready to open. It has gone from a three-day service to a four-day service and full five-day service is still not available. That should not be happening. If everything else is opening, I see no reason why that service should not open. I will send the details onto the Minister; hopefully, we will be able to get it sorted.

I hope the Minister of Education is correct when she says that the transfer of these functions is going to provide a renewed opportunity for services and greater integration. It seems a bit counterintuitive that things can be switched from one Department to another. I hope it works, and I look forward to seeing how the change will happen. I wish everybody well with it, because at the end of the day, it is about young people and students, and ensuring that we have a service in place that is fit for purpose for the most vulnerable children in our society.

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