Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing this Private Members' motion to the floor. I welcome the opportunity to speak on it.

Last week, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul released its minimum essential standard of living, MESL, 2023 report. Over the past 12 months, the cost of being able to live with dignity has gone up by 10%, climbing by 13% for those who live in a city. The cost of basic items has gone up by nearly 20% in the past three years. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul predicts a 6.3% increase in this year and into 2024. We are in the middle of a massive cost-of-living crisis and it is getting worse. Much of any savings or emergency funds people have are spent. The Government has done little to combat this. It has given once-off payments, but fundamentally money must be put into services and pensions and basic pay must increase.

The hunger in the classroom study from February found 79% of teachers said they had hungry children in their classrooms every week. Of those, 40% said this happened every day and 73% said the problem was getting worse. The effect of the cost-of-living crisis on education is not just about the cost of schoolbooks and uniforms; it is about seeing our children going to school hungry because their families cannot afford food, cold because they cannot afford heating and in emergency accommodation because they cannot afford homes. Children cannot learn properly if they are hungry because they cannot concentrate. The cost of providing a decent education is not just about what happens in school; it is about fighting poverty, building homes and making sure children have a decent standard of living.

The cost of living is 12.5% more expensive compared with a year ago. The cost of a sliced pan has increased by 18%. The cost of butter has increased by 40%. Rents are up by 8%. Half of Irish tenants spend more than 30% of their pay on rent. Mortgage interest payments have increased by a whopping 44%. I spoke to a man in my constituency yesterday. His mortgage, which is with a vulture fund, was €846 a month but has increased to €1,464. That is before the interest rate hikes announced last week kick in, and we are expecting more down the road. Electricity is still 35% more expensive and the cost of gas has increased by 47%.

Wages, benefits and pensions increased by only 4% in the last year. The standard of living is being cut. It is estimated that 29% of Irish households are now living in energy poverty, the highest number ever recorded. Poverty rates for pensioners doubled between 2020 and 2022. Homelessness is at a record high after the eviction ban was lifted. Those are some of the realities people are facing.

One cost went down noticeably in the MESL report. The report states education costs went down by 6%, primarily due to the free primary schoolbooks scheme. This is welcome. I reiterate what other Deputies have said, namely, that secondary schoolbooks should also be free.

It does not matter if the cost of everything else goes up, but it shows the importance of these schemes. We need more of them for school meals, school uniforms and travel costs. We are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis and if the Government will not intervene to help people who are struggling, it could at least intervene to make sure that children are properly fed and educated through all of this.

This country made good strides in education over the past few decades. There was a period when access to third level education was increasingly available to ordinary people. That began to end when Fine Gael and the Labour Party doubled student fees after the recession. That access declined further with the housing crisis. The current cost-of-living crisis might be the final nail in the coffin.

If people cannot afford to heat their homes or buy food, they cannot afford to send their kids to college. People cannot afford to rent in Dublin and other cities. They cannot find somewhere to rent. The housing and cost-of-living crises prevent a lot of working-class kids and families from entering and progressing to third level education. That will only get worse. We need real interventions to make sure everyone has an equal opportunity to get a good education no matter where they come from or how much money they have. Free third level education is important and should be on the Government's agenda in the next budget.

This does not just affect children and students; it also affects teachers. The crisis in housing and the cost of living are having a massive effect on the living standards of teachers, lecturers and PhD students. There is an increasing shortage of teachers across our education system. We know why his is happening. It is the same for nurses and healthcare workers. People cannot afford to live or rent in the cities or the country. Teaching unions are now pushing for pay increases in line with the cost-of-living increases. PhD students are organising so that they are paid properly for their work, and I support them.

Our education system cannot function if no one can afford to work in it. There are huge problems across our education system, but the immediate one is to make sure every child can get a decent education during this cost-of-living crisis. That means providing more support to families in homelessness or at risk of property. It means paying teachers properly. It means making sure that primary, secondary and third level education is free. We need free schoolbooks and uniforms and the extension of the free school meals programme not just to DEIS schools but to every school so that no child goes to school hungry. We need to pay educators properly so that we retain them and they can do their jobs properly. We need to scrap all charges and increase student grants so that everyone, no matter who they are or where they come from, have access to the same education as everybody else.

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