Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

That is the point I am making. I am suggesting it should be extended to other areas. The reason it has happened in Adamstown is due to the integrated area action plan which has been designated by the Government but it should be replicated in every other part of the country to ensure we have schools built on time. The school building programme is important.

I raised another issue last week in the House that is a real scandal, namely, the failure on the part of the Health Service Executive, HSE, to employ speech and language therapists and other therapists in the Dublin area. We have 25 unfilled posts in Dublin. The money has been provided for them but we cannot find people to fill them to help children in schools and hospitals in other parts of the city of Dublin. I put forward a suggestion last week, and I ask the Government to consider it, that a new junior post would be established for young graduates, 100 of whom are coming from four colleges throughout the country this year, and that those posts should be ring-fenced for those graduates. This would mean that we could establish at least that new posts ready to be filled would be taken on.

St. Joseph's School, a special school in the constituency in which I live, and Coláiste Eoin were allocated a half post between them or a quarter post each on the basis of one week on, one week off. In April 2006, the therapist resigned and the Health Service Executive, HSE, advertised for a replacement in December. No one has been appointed yet because of bureaucracy.

My third proposal is that the Department of Education and Science directly employs speech and language therapists in the schools. There is a mismatch between the HSE, responsible for filling the posts, and the Department of Education and Science which allows the HSE to make these decisions. These are specialist schools, not mainstream schools, where all children have mild intellectual disabilities and require help with speech and language training. The Department of Education and Science could not fill a quarter post. It remained dormant for a year. Why can the Department of Education and Science, with a constitutional obligation to the children in those schools, not effect the appointment of a quarter post to each of those schools in Dublin South-West? It is a scandal and the solution is for the Department of Education and Science to take responsibility for speech and language training within our school system rather than delegating it to the HSE which is not capable of producing the solutions teachers want to see.

We expect far too much from our education system. I admire the young dedicated Irish teachers at primary and secondary level. They do fantastic work but the Oireachtas continually sets them new tasks and asks them to take responsibility for matters that are outside the remit of education. The Oireachtas must get real and ask teachers to teach. That is their function, not to be social workers or take on the burdens of modern society. They need resources and the goodwill that exists toward the education system, especially primary education.