Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Education is the great liberator, but that is if you can get an education. In Ireland in 2024, as we have learned today, 44 pupils across the country are being taught at home because there is no school place available for them. A further 150 young people are receiving home tuition because of anxiety or mental health issues but also in many cases because there are just not enough staff in their school to look after them during the day. Those figures, awful though they are, only scratch the surface and do not take account of the immense disruption caused to children with additional needs who have no clear routine because they are forced to travel to get an education. The figures do not take account of the immense stress and financial cost to the parents of those children and their families. One parent in my own community wrote to me about the situation facing his son. He is one of the many thousands of children who are being taken out of their home area in buses and taxis every day, bussed out just to go to school. On the lack of resources for children with additional needs, the parent said this has transformed some special schools into nothing more than containment facilities to try to manage behaviours of children, not educational spaces. There just are not enough staff in schools and that is failing our children.

It is not just those children who are without a special school place or without SNA support in the classroom who are at risk. Our schooling system is facing a crisis of teacher supply more generally. I hear this from teachers, principals and parents in Dublin, Meath, Kildare, Louth, Galway, Cork and other places too. We are all hearing it. The Taoiseach insists that all children who need a school place will get one but I cannot see how he can guarantee that. The facts speak for themselves. Already I am dealing with parents on the housing list who are terrified they will be unable to take up an offer of a home in a particular area because it will mean their child cannot find a school. We all know of teaching staff who cannot find accommodation near their schools due to the housing crisis. The INTO tells us that nearly 1,000 posts are vacant in our primary schools. The Department of Education reports that nearly half of all secondary schools across the commuter belt will be oversubscribed in the coming school year. Demographic changes signal an enormous crisis in secondary education coming down the tracks. Our schools are already understaffed, principals are telling us they are struggling to recruit qualified teachers and new graduates cannot afford to live where we need them to live. Special education teachers are being forced to plug personnel gaps. Shockingly, unqualified teaching staff are being recruited to keep classrooms open while many subjects are being taken off the curriculum in individual second level schools due to lack of teachers. The effect is that our children's education is being undermined. Teachers' unions and parents have highlighted the problems schools are facing, including a shortage of teachers, the working conditions for new and junior teachers and the double whammy of the cost-of-living and housing crises.

We need a commitment to address these issues. We in the Labour Party are calling for a task force to address this crisis. What is the Government putting in place now to stem the exodus of teachers from our schools?

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