Mary Ann O'Brien (Independent)

I would like to focus on the Department of Education and Skills. We are all aware that given our financial circumstances and given it is one of the top-spending Departments, there have been huge cutbacks in the Department. However, we need to use common sense when it comes to making these cuts, rather than purely look at things as though through the lens of an accountant doing an accounting exercise. Our civil servants seem to forget that their decisions impact on ordinary human beings and, in this case, on a segment of society that is particularly vulnerable and relatively voiceless. One would also have to ask whether the savings accrued are even worth speaking about.

I refer to the 1,300 visually impaired students attending mainstream education all round this country at both primary and secondary level. We are all aware of the benefits of mainstream education for the students in question as well as the wider student body. However, the continuation of these blind and visually impaired students in this type of education is coming under huge threat due to the cutbacks being inflicted on resource hours for these children. In recent years, there has been a 10% cutback in resource hours. Let Senators here imagine the case if they had a blind child in school and were told there would be a 10% cutback in resource hours. That does not appear much, but when these students are only left with three and a half hours per week, the percentage is very serious. The three and a half hours allocation is applied as the standard resource, with no regard for whether the child is totally blind or visually impaired. As Senators can imagine, this causes huge problems for all the stakeholders involved with the child. It does have an impact on the other children in the mainstream class, whether the civil servants like to admit it or not. No more than 40 of these students are totally blind and each of them has no choice other than to learn through the medium of Braille. Learning the Braille code, as well as all the other challenges facing a blind child that are not encountered by a sighted child, is an exhaustive process. Therefore, one must question the standard allocation of resource hours across the board without any consideration-----