Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. That is positive. At a recent meeting the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science discussed prisoners, another group of people who sometimes enter further and higher education through a different pathway. I made the point that in the United States surveys by Ohio University have identified that up to 40% of inmates accessing higher education through the prison service have learning difficulties. We have no empirical evidence in this regard in Ireland. Higher education educators going into prisons can see this. We can very quickly see when an individual struggles with dyscalculia or dyslexia. It is wrong. There are certain interventions that a teacher is skilled to make but there is no diagnostic capacity. There is no capacity to wrap this up or quantify what it is and how to properly deal with it. It would be great if the Minister's Department could do this. It is not in the realm of justice. I would say it is in the realm of further and higher education.

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