Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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80. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the measures in place or planned to improve access to further and higher education and training for learners with disabilities; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26970/21]

Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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I want to ask the Minister what measures are in place and, more importantly, what is planned to improve the access of people with learning disabilities to higher education. It is very fundamental. It is important that there are planned improvements in the Department to improve accessibility to higher education for people with disabilities.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I am delighted the Deputy has raised this issue. I note his interest in it. This is a major priority for me and the entire Government. The Cabinet committee on education recently had a discussion about this very matter. I have undertaken to do two things between now and September, in conjunction with a number of Government colleagues, in particular the Ministers of State, Deputies Josepha Madigan and Anne Rabbitte.

The first thing I want to do is to examine the transition planning for students with disabilities when they leave school. I have been Minister for Health, as the Deputy knows. The discussion is often too narrow and concerns what health services a person will be provided with post school, rather than what skills or jobs he or she would like or what college he or she would like to go to. We are narrowing the conversation and sometimes almost suggesting that an educational journey must end when a person leaves school.

I am doing a piece of work with the Department of Education, the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and my Department regarding what I am calling transition planning, career guidance and the like.

The second piece we are doing is a mapping exercise. There are some very good examples of good practice out there. Next week, for example, I will visit the Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities. It is taking students with intellectual disabilities, and I have met them on a number of occasions already, straight from school and getting them into Trinity College, where they leave with an award and are linked in with employment. I met the National Learning Network in my constituency, which is also running a number of programmes through the Rehab Group. There are many examples of good practice which we are mapping out. By September I intend to report back to the Cabinet committee and, indeed, will be delighted to report back to the House on what more we can do.

We are developing a new national access plan. It is due to be developed this year. We have exceeded many targets in this area, but this is because the targets are under-ambitious. We are not measuring enough types of disability in that national access plan. We are out to consultation on it at the moment and will be developing the new national access plan during the course of the year. We need transition planning, a mapping out of what is there and then a scaling up of it.

Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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It is most important that there is development and a pathway for people throughout the regions. I understand and have studied the Trinity programme, which is centralised in a major urban centre. For people with disabilities, either learning or physical, the difficulty is travelling. What needs to be done in the programme over the next couple of months is to assess the need within communities and how many people are falling between the cracks.

I have many experiences of people who go through second level education and because the system is not built to embrace them, encourage them and ensure they go on through education to the best of their ability, they fall through the cracks. It is necessary to look at those who have been left behind heretofore, as well as those in the future, to see how a network and realistic framework can be built throughout the higher education sector that will embrace people, and will look at their potential and what they can do. They have an enormous amount to contribute to society if we give them the enabler, which, of course, is the educational tools. It is necessary to look at the need, those that have fallen through the cracks, where they are now and how they can be rehabilitated into a newer system, and also plan for the future to make sure there is regional balance and supports for people.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I promise the Deputy we will do this. I met representatives from Down Syndrome Ireland recently. I talked to parents who said to me that, in some cases, not only are they not seeing their children progress when they leave school, which is the wish all parents have for their children, but are actually seeing them regress. What a horrific thing for parents to have to say, that at the time they see other children going to college, training and all these exciting things, they worry about their children going backwards in terms of their well-being, intellectual stimulation and the like.

What is good about the mapping exercise, and the reason I used Trinity as an example, is the question I ask every day - if we can do this in Trinity, why are we not doing it in every other university across the country? There are similar programmes in some. We will use the education and training board network, the colleges of further education and the higher education institutions. We will engage with disability stakeholders and link with the Department of Education because that transition piece is absolutely crucial. We will get this done. This is a major priority for me, my Department and the Government as a whole. We will also feed it into the development of the new national access plan.