Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I echo what Deputy O'Reilly said about the need to actually support this motion. Education is the last great equaliser of society. While it is no load to bear, the opportunities it presents, particularly to those who were born into disadvantage, cannot be overestimated.

I will briefly touch on some comments made by the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science earlier. I am not sure what he thought he was doing. Perhaps he was playing to the audience of those he hopes will vote for him in the next Fine Gael leader's election but considering how long Fine Gael has been in power, if he thinks that parents and students believe a word that comes out of his mouth about how it has the solutions to this issue, he is very wrong.

I spoke earlier about this needing to be a first step. This needs to be the first step. The post-primary schoolbooks scheme needs to be a first step. We then need to tackle capitation grant levels. The Minister of State mentioned them in his contribution. They are nowhere near the pre-economic crash level, never mind being increased due to increasing costs since then. While pupil-teacher ratios have come down, we are still a country mile away from where some of our European neighbours are and those we should seek to replicate.

Regarding the summer works scheme, I was in a school recently where the footpath was so crumbled, it is now literally a slip and trip hazard for the students and teachers in that school. Where is that programme at? Where is the ICT grant programme at? The Government has introduced a digital strategy but it is failing to actually resource schools to be able to deliver a request the Department is making of them. It is the same with the assistant principal 1 and assistant principal 2 posts. The Department has these asks of schools but it is failing to resource the management capabilities within the schools for the schools to be able to deliver them.

Do not get me started on books for the visually impaired. It is a thundering disgrace that any child should have to wait that length of time to get a book simply because it is in braille. If this was in any other circumstance, I can guarantee that somebody would have taken a legal action against the State.

We also need to drastically improve the level of intervention therapy services within our schools, particularly speech and language therapies. There is a reason they are so effective at a particular age and get more difficult as the child grows older. We need to have an honest conversation about the reasonable accommodation scheme for students with disabilities or students who may need additional supports. I will give the Minister an example of one comment a principal made to me quite recently. It involved the frozen fish fingers that come in a box. Two siblings in that principal's school came to the attention of one of the teachers. Something was a little of in the classroom. One sibling had one frozen fish finger in their lunch box while the other sibling had the other frozen fish finger in their lunch box.

While the Government talks about school meals and expanding the school meals programme, it needs to look at it as a whole, because while the Government is expanding it, it is not increasing the funding to schools to allow them to cope with the increased electricity costs where that food is produced on site or to manage the additional waste that comes from providing school meals. The Government talks about the primary school book grant, which is very welcome, but I am not the only parent who has received an email from a school saying that it does not go far enough. In fact, there were reports saying that it should be around €110 per year to be effective.

I listened with some level of interest when the Minister spoke about the school transport system last year being a success. I think there is a level of amnesia here. The school transport system last year was anything but a success. The only thing in school transport last year that somebody should be commenting on was the fact that it was an absolute disaster and how he or she will never stand over such a disaster happening again. The only thing that equals the unmet demand in school transport is the unpublished review that should have been out by now because students are going to be reliant on this, come September.

Another issue I wish to raise is that of teachers contributing to schools on a voluntary basis. Teachers giving freely of their time is not a never-ending resource. Teachers will not work for nothing forever. At this point, schools will have to start asking whether they have the capacity to deliver what the Department is asking them to deliver without that additional finance being available. Deputy Ó Laoghaire made a very good comment earlier. Sinn Féin introduced the Education (Voluntary Contributions) Bill but the Government kicked it down the road. We introduced a Bill on affordable school uniforms but the Government failed to support that. There is a considerable amount of work to be done when it comes to adequately funding education. Do not be so blind to good ideas simply because they do not come from that side of the House.

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