Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Gannon and the Social Democrats. I very much welcome this motion. It is a very serious issue and in the short time I have, I will mainly focus on the impact it is having on children and their educational opportunities. We get one chance in the school system. Every child is obviously different and it can be very difficult for some children, particularly in the aftermath of Covid-19.

It has always frustrated me that after Covid-19 schools went back to a more normal system and children were just expected to slot back in. There was not the recognition that should have been there. Additional resource hours were given in some cases but not all. It is as though that year and a half did not happen. Now we see a situation where children are back into the school system and are trying to catch up. Many children are still trying to catch up on the basics of reading, writing and spelling, depending on the age they were and what class they were in when the lockdowns happened. Homeschooling was a complete disaster and no child benefited from it. After Covid-19 we needed to put a great deal more resources in. What has happened is a serious shortage of teachers and that is having an impact. It is unacceptable that children have different teachers or they might have free classes. Kids love the excitement of going to school and having no classes for a day but in the long term that is not going to benefit them. It is totally unfair to the teachers who are doing their best and, in some circumstances, coming in when they are sick and they know they should be out. They are doing their best because they do not want to let the students down. Teachers are being driven out of our cities by the cost of housing and the inability to find housing. To say it is a mess is an understatement. I agree with my colleagues who said the Government's proposal of the Government is ridiculous. It is a divide and conquer mentality rather than examining the solutions at which we should look in regard to housing and ensuring we have adequate teaching staff.

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