Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I, too, welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important subject. When we talk about an increase in resources, I do not believe the increase in resources is actually keeping pace with the demand that is there. It is actually falling behind. I say that because of the number of people who have contacted my office and whom I have met during my clinics who have problems with their special needs children. The problems start when trying to get a diagnosis with the children's disability network teams, CDNTs. Then the assessments are done, and people then try to find the therapists to do the work with the child to try to improve the child's potential. These issues have been ongoing, and they are not seemingly getting resolved. What is happening is that we have waiting times and frustration. The next step then is getting children into a special school and trying to get them to a place where they can be helped to try to fulfil their full potential. I will accept that schools are not being built. Special schools are being built, including the new St. Oliver's Special School that was built three years ago in Tuam. However, the fact is it has a waiting list now. We seem to say we have built a new school and we clap ourselves on the back and say that is it, leave that now and let that work its way through.

I visited Lakeview School on the Dublin Road in Galway. It is not fit for purpose as a physical building. In the middle of it are adult services. It is a building that needs to be knocked to the ground and a new school needs to be built. That is a fact. It has a waiting list. It has people and families who are hoping to try to get their children in, and the school management is trying to facilitate everybody and has to tell people it does not have a place for them. I have been working with a number of families. It is very disheartening for them. I listened to the lived experience of people in the audiovisual room today who were talking about their experience with child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, and children. It is only adding another layer of stress to a family when they cannot access basic rights for their children. We can put every kind of figure out into the public domain. It is true we are spending more money, but we are not spending it at the pace we should be spending it.

The special education teaching hours have raised huge problems in my constituency. In Galway East, a lot of the national schools will have less hours next September, but they are still expected to deliver the same service they delivered this year gone by with less resources. Coupled with that, a number of schools have contacted my with regard to the ordinary capitation grant for their schools. It is not even meeting basic heating, lighting and cleaning costs in their schools. We talk about free education. If it is to be free, we need to make sure the money is there so that it is free and that if there is fundraising going on, it is for the additional nice things that people would like and not just the basic things to which people are entitled.

The other issue that comes up is that an announcement is made that an ASD unit is going into a school, but the physical space is not there and the Department of Education refuses to build an additional piece of accommodation or it will take five years to get it built. It says that the school can use its general purpose room for the purpose of teaching and get rid of what is probably a vital component in any education process, which is physical education and space for children to exercise. In the building unit in the Department of Education, we seem to be removed completely from the reality on the ground. We also seem to be planning in the dark because we just do not seem to be able to get on top of the numbers who are coming on stream every year. We had a wake-up call this year with the influx of Ukrainian refugees over the past number of years. We also have other children coming into the country - asylum seekers or whatever - and we have to meet the demand that is there. However, our population is growing, and we seem to be completely at sea as to how we actually plan for the future.

We seem to be doing it on an ad hocbasis. Also, the process by which we build our schools is so cumbersome, long-winded and costly without building anything or providing the infrastructure. It is important we get to grips with reality. Maybe 20 years ago, we were squandering money or money was going astray or whatever in the public capital programmes, but nowadays we are taking so much time that money is being wasted instead of being spent. Right now, with the inflation we have in this country, every year you delay doing a project you add approximately 10% to the cost. At the same time, you have procurement managers and every kind of guy telling you how to do something and how you cannot do this, that and other, and you have gateway approvals, and you end up spending a great deal more taxpayers' money for that extra bit of space you might need in a school.

I believe we should be going back to a more hands-on approach from schools. We should be able to devolve funding to the schools in a way they can take on a project and give them that freedom and trust that they can build it. I guarantee the Minister of State, if they hire in their own consultants and if the Department is not dominating and domineering in terms of reports, the Department will end up getting better value for money. The Department of public expenditure needs to look at it seriously at this stage.

Teacher training is another mystery. We train our teachers but they go out into the workforce and they do not get a permanent job. They have to wait. They are not guaranteed anything. It is one sure recipe for people, when they have their degree, to decide to take the plane and go some place else, and then we wonder why we are short on staff. That happens with all professions. Last January, I met with a speech and language therapist in Dubai who had worked with the HSE for three and a half years and, because she was not made permanent, she decided to take up her hook and go some place where she would find work on a more permanent basis. At the same time, we are talking about being unable to get therapists and there being a staff shortage. The reality is we are blindly following procedures on how we appoint teachers to schools, and how we give them a permanent contract and give them the confidence they need that they will remain in this country is very important.

There are many things I am critical of but what we need to do is say that at the heart of all of this are the children. The summer provision programme is typical. The Government needs to tell us straight-up if more money is being made available or if less money is being made available. Will it say yes or no and let us know for sure? What I have heard today is that there has been a reduction in the capitation grant for the summer provision. If there is, why? If there is not, tell us exactly what is being provided.

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