Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I concur with Senator Bacik regarding the danger of the severe cuts to resource teachers for Traveller children. These cuts will not only affect Traveller children; they will affect all our children. Travellers are particularly at risk of early school leaving. Last autumn this House completed an Oireachtas report on preventing early school leaving which heard from many parts of society and I ask the Leader to provide time to debate that report at the earliest opportunity.

An important event is taking place today in the Department of Education and Skills, namely, the first of three discussion days on a national forum on patronage and pluralism in the primary school sector. The Catholic Church has been our main patron for many years but other groups now want to become patrons, not least Educate Together. This is an important benchmark in the history of Irish education. Seating is reserved for the discussion days but if Members are interested they should take advantage of this opportunity to get involved. The discussions, which are chaired by the eminent Professor John Coolahan, are taking place in the clock tower in the Department of Education and Skills and can be viewed online. When the discussions have concluded, I ask the Leader to arrange for the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, to debate explicitly the findings on school patronage and provide a roadmap of his plans for the issue. This issue cannot be addressed until we finalise these discussions and there are practical ramifications on the ground. For example, efforts to establish a new school are ongoing in Clare-Galway but the project is being delayed by the issue of naming a patron.