Ken O'Flynn (Cork North-Central, Independent Ireland Party)

I support the Bill not because it is a radical idea, but because it is basically decent. No parent should go into debt to send a child to school or to educate their children. This Bill only exists because the Government has failed in the most fundamental of duties to make education genuinely free and fair. We have heard many times that Ministers roll out free books, free books and free books, but parents are still being hit with hidden charges. Many schools today had contacted families earlier this year telling them, or forcing them, to purchase electronic tablets costing up to €600 per child. Let us imagine being the parent hit with that charge in August and September while having the additional cost of €1,400 to €1,600 on a uniform.

On top of that we have the so-called voluntary contributions, which are anything but voluntary these days. I have met school principals the length and breath of this country who are begging parents simply to keep the lights on in their schools and to pay the insurance costs. The facts are stark. An analysis of 707 schools shows that heating costs are up 83% since 2019, water and refuse bills are up 51%, accounting and auditing costs are up 58% in schools and the cost of management systems is a staggering 199% increase. The average primary school faces a deficit of €17,000 in day-to-day running costs while the Minister of State and Ministers parade around claiming that Irish education is free. That is a falsehood. It is not free. It is a lie that is told by comfortable people to the struggling families of this nation.

We have schools that cannot pay their energy bills but the same Department seems to have an endless and bottomless pit of money available for ideology and teaching nine-year olds about transgenderism and social theories instead of maths, science and literature. That is not education; that is indoctrination. This is what the Department is doing. Parents did not vote for their children to be used as social experiments. Families in Cork, Mallow, Glanmire, Little Island, and Ballincollig want everything that we had as children growing up. They want the basics done right. They want heat in the classrooms, affordable uniforms and education that is real learning that will put their children in a place where they are available for the jobs of tomorrow. They want their taxes spent on teachers. They do not want it spent on consultants and PR campaigns about inclusivity. What they really want is nothing more than getting the basics right so their children are able to leave school, go on to third level education and secure a future in this country. The Government is drunk on the nectar of self-congratulation while ordinary parents in this country are running on empty.

The truth is the Department of education has lost touch with classrooms. It governs by press release, with parents left in the lurch and left to feel the pain over and over again. Most parents facing the summer holidays are thinking about how they will pay the bills when schools return in August and September and what other hidden charges there might be. I support the Bill not as a gesture but as a rebuke to the Government. It takes the Opposition to remind it that the Minister for Education and Youth and her Department should serve families, not lecture them.

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