Results 81-100 of 5,325 for speaker:Joe O'Reilly

Seanad: An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: Cavan will be back shortly. We nearly did it this year. I wish all colleagues in the House a wonderful summer and great recess after a year of multiple elections and frenetic levels of activity. I wish our wonderful staff of the House a great summer also. Our ushers and all of the staff of Leinster House do a great job and provide such wonderful support. One cannot help but remember with...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: I welcome our guests and thank them for their painstaking detail and responses. Inevitably, there will be a level of repetition. There are similar themes all the time. It is important that every one of us explores the issues fully. If our guests do not mind, I will ask my few questions one by one and get their responses one by one rather than ask them all together. Returning to early...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: Please.

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: That is quite good. The question arises about the other 24%, of course, but it is still positive. It is critical. I am a teacher by background. I have taught Travellers as well. Speaking as a teacher, and as all the best psychological research shows and as the witness are well aware, early intervention is critical. That is good, but there is the question of the 24%. I know it is the...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: Good attendance before then is crucial to them wanting to go on.

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: Are the community link workers from among the Traveller community?

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: They are Travellers.

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: In east London, there is empirical evidence that shows that youth workers who come from the communities being targeted have a much greater impact.

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: We do not live in an ideal world, but perhaps this could be considered insofar as it could. Do the witnesses envisage that link workers will be like margarine or will they be able to focus on communities? Will there be enough of them? They would not want to just visit, say, Cavan one day, Louth the next and not get back to Cavan, Louth or Meath for another three months? Will they be fit...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: Some of the team will be focused in on every need and on every person.

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: That is good.

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: The link workers are key, as is the attendance piece.

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: What else matters?

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: I wish to make a general anecdotal observation, as I do not have any special data or specific empirical evidence. I have noticed that a number of Travellers go to Youthreach at 15 or 16 years of age.

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: Youthreach is excellent but one would hope that the maximum number would stay in mainstream education.

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: I am not being patronising or messing when I say that I am genuinely impressed by the strategies, how the Department officials are going about implementing them and their enthusiasm for same.

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: My final question relates to my previous one. It is something that Senator Noonan honed in on today and other days, namely, the idea of Traveller culture being understood or celebrated throughout the school. Perhaps this could be done through the curriculum or as part of special days in schools where there would be entertainment. Part of that could be music or song, both of which are very...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: Great.

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: Yes, there is a lot of that.

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Participation in Education: Department of Education and Youth (17 Jul 2025)

Joe O'Reilly: I will finish with a comment. So much success has been achieved with participation in primary and the junior certificate cycle. From what the witnesses have told me, there is remarkably good participation in early childhood education, albeit with a deficit of 24%. Obviously, there are a lot of issues within that 24%. However, it is brilliant that so much has been achieved. Everyone...