Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I understand the Minister, Deputy Foley, will have to leave during the debate to attend an important ceremony later in Marino, which is in my constituency. That is fully understandable.

While I have the Minister's attention, I want to turn to one issue around DEIS. It comes to the issue of school costs. A number of schools in three geographical locations in Dublin that are acutely disadvantaged are advocating for a DEIS+ scheme. Most of this is related to trauma supports. I thought I had heard it all until I heard what principals had to say in a number of meetings I had with them. One principal told me that a particular child, because of a lack of intervention, is lost. She is in fifth class. If the interventions had taken place when they were first flagged in second class, she would not be lost, but the principal looked at me and said, "She's lost. She's gone".

Another conversation I had was in a different part of Dublin, where a principal happened to mention to me that because of a local feud, they have changed the route they walk to swimming in the morning. This is a primary school. I said to this principal, "Do you mean to tell me that you have changed the route you walk to swimming because you are afraid a child will get shot?". She said yes. It was a such a run-of-the-mill thing that she had to organise as part of her week that the starkness of the reality did not really compute with her. In this place in Dublin, they have decided to reroute the children from where they would normally go on their way to swimming because they are afraid that one of them will get shot by mistake.

Twenty years ago in DEIS schools, we used to contemplate what a disaster it would be when the functional generation of grandparents got older, and was replaced by the heroin generation. That is where we are now. We are at the point where the grandparents on whom we used to be able to depend to put a hand in their pocket for the various bits and pieces the school might ask for, or for the functionality of the school week, cannot be relied on anymore because the grandparents are now from that heroin generation of the 1980s and 1990s. That is absolutely terrifying, because the very thing that held these communities together is now breaking apart in their very hands. I cannot overstate to the Minister how shocked I was, and I worked in DEIS for 11 years in an acutely disadvantaged area. I was absolutely shocked by what I was hearing from these principals.

I know the Minister is a person of action, and she is a person of compassion. I know that when she hears these testimonies, and when she listens to what they say, she will act. I know she will say that there has been unprecedented investment in DEIS. I know that 25% of the schools in the country now have DEIS status, but that does not help those acutely disadvantaged schools that are crying out for therapeutic support, teacher support and the type of multidisciplinary teams that are available in Dublin 1.

On the issue of costs, again I will congratulate the Minister, because we campaigned for a long time for a free book scheme. We wanted what they had in Northern Ireland to be freely available here, and the Minister has done it. It is an historic achievement, and I have to say that to the Minister. I know that dealing with the Department of Education is not always an easy thing to do, but we absolutely want this to be carried on to second level. We need to ban voluntary contributions. We need to make that strong case from the Department. We need to say that voluntary contributions are just illegal, because I am afraid one cannot trust every single school. In the Minister's comments, I know she said that the vast majority of schools understand, but not all of them do. Many schools are in competition with each other. They will not admit this, but it is true. They are in competition for kids. In my constituency, there are open night banners every September because they want to attract children to their schools. That means they have to provide something which maybe the other school does not have. This has gone down the road of crested jumpers, iPads, trips, tours and all the rest of it, and the voluntary contribution is a part of that. It is obscene when one sees how much some schools can raise in their own school communities in the fundraisers they have. I am aware of €50,000 being raised in one night.

What we really want - I know the Minister agrees with me on this - is that parents' interactions with a school would not to come down to money. We want them never to be asked for it or chased for it, the teacher not to have to ask for it, and the principal not to have to spend his or her time trying to find money to run the school. Would it not be wonderful if the parents' association never had to raise funds? Would it not be magic if it was not a fundraising body, but actually a body of parents who talked about education, child development and school life? What we have now effectively turns the parents' association into a school fundraising entity. I keep making this point, but if one does not have the voluntary contribution, or if one feels that one is not in the same space as other people financially, one is less likely to go to the school gate. One is less likely to go to a parent-teacher meeting, and absolutely less likely to engage fully in school life, because one is going to be asked for money. It is not just the humiliation - it is absolutely humiliating if one does not have it, and humiliating for the child because the child knows, smells and senses everything - but it also means that the conversation one could be having is replaced by a conversation about money.

This goes to the heart of what was referred to earlier about tax cuts. In fairness, this is not what the Minister is propagating. However, I read the article supposedly written by three Ministers of State from the Government, who are members of the Fine Gael Party, and the Taoiseach had no difficulty with it. It used language about the squeezed middle, the tax burden and all this kind of thing, as if the only way one can actually help a family is with a tax cut. The narrative is a nasty and quite divisive one. The sense that they are trying to give is that loads of people get stuff for free, but some people are paying for everything. What they are trying to say is that there is a cohort of people beneath them who get stuff for free, while others work away and pay loads of tax without getting anything free, even though they do. That is why we feel so strongly about universality in the Labour Party. People do not need a tax cut; they need free school meals and books, and an absolute ban on voluntary contributions. They need free school transport, and they also need other things to be provided for them such as childcare. A reference has been made to third level fees. Surely that is the type of intervention that our supposedly squeezed middle-class in Ireland needs more than a divisive, selfish type of proposal that is red meat to the base that Fine Gael is trying to court favour with. It is that type of Ireland we would prefer to have.

Let us cut to the chase here. On books, the Minister has done it at primary level and let us do it at secondary level. Let us please ban voluntary contributions. The Minister could take the Labour Party legislation and amend it. Certainly, a strong statement has to be sent out to every school in the country that they should not do this anymore. We could do what the Catholic Primary School Management Association has said, and replace that funding to the tune of about €45 million in the Minister's budget, which would mean that no school would have to raise funds. We could end this interschool competition when it comes to school uniforms. We could make school transport absolutely free, as was done last year, and we could do the same with school meals.

In fairness to the Minister, it would not be fair for me to stand here and say as one does in politics, "Here is the Opposition with all the answers and there is the uncaring Government that does not want to listen to us". The Minister has listened to us, and has made the change. I know that the instinct of the Department is not to engage in the day-to-day management of schools. That is why I feel it was probably resistant to the idea of a free school book scheme. However, from September I want to make sure there is no school that can work its way around the free books scheme by saying "Yes, there is a free books scheme, but we want €5, €10 or €15 for the novel", or for another supplementary piece of stationery, or whatever.

I will finish where I started, on the DEIS+ proposals. I do not want to be saying these things, and I have deliberately not isolated the geographical areas that these three bunches of schools are in, but it is frightening and it is happening now. They are asking for a very simple support from the Minister's Department in order that children can be assisted. I worry that what I witnessed is going to get worse, and the very schools that are holding these communities in their hands will not be in a position to care for these children, as a result of which we are going to face much more intense and profound problems into the future.

See this speech in context