Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 18:

In page 9, lines 18 and 19, to delete all words from and including “deletion” in line 18 down to and including line 19 and substitute “substitution of “authorised” for “administered”.”.

Despite what happened to be in the previous section, this is an era of openness, transparency and accountability. While we have freedom of information legislation tabled for debate on Thursday, here we have a section entitled “Refusal of access to certain information”. It is essential that, as with HIQA in the health field and consumer bodies in many other areas, people have information on issues such as non-performing teachers and people teaching mathematics who have no qualification in the subject. These are vital decisions in the future of the country where we, as legislators, should act on behalf of young people in these schools who ought to know what is happening.
Why do we have such a section for such a vital decision when the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin is introducing more freedom of information legislation this week and it is the ethos of our time to open places where information is closed and let people see what is happening and take better-informed decisions. I oppose the section. The opposition to league tables in education is wrong. For example, we must have information on which 400 of the 4,000 schools in the country, are designated as Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, DEIS, schools. Why would we want people not to know what is happening in schools? The section is very old-fashioned and goes against the spirit of modern education and the rights of children. Every time we have tried to cover things up we have got into more trouble afterwards. We should let all this information go out as part of reforming education on behalf of the next generation. I was very surprised the Bill specified that we did not want information about schools being available to parents and pupils.