Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I also wish to raise something related to our anticipation that a significant number of school children will join our system from Ukraine. Typically, English language support would be allocated in September. Schools will need that much sooner in these circumstances. Will the Minister examine this to see whether additional English language support can be provided? There are schools that want to take on additional language support teachers but the funding is not there. I encourage the Minister to provide this. It is one of the lessons we can learn from how schools supported children who came here from Syria. The Department did a lot of good work and many schools did heroic work but where it fell down in many cases was in English language support. This cannot wait until September. We need to address this now and provide funding for schools to find teachers and staff who can assist with language because that will be a big barrier.

See this speech in context