Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the House today. Having read the plan and the proposals for the education of our children, I also thank him for them. We need much more action to address the chronic underinvestment which currently cripples our education system. In the past, this was known as the land of saints and scholars but hopefully we have lost the saints. For the scholarly, however, it depends on ones post code. Inequality is very much in existence.

What we have today is simply a rerun of last year's education plan and a DEIS update which leaves out a whole host of disadvantaged schools, with thousands of students left behind because of underinvestment. TASC launched a report in autumn or winter last year for 2016.It states that inequality is not noticed at birth, at one year or at three years old but it starts to creep up after that and begins to show in the child. The saddest thing I ever heard was that, by the age of 13, children in disadvantaged areas give up psychologically on their dreams of being princesses, going to university or being rocket spacemen. This is through disadvantage and the lack of a secure education for them. We need to bring this back into our education system for all our children.

The most disturbing part of the decision is only to provide ten NEPS psychologists even though 600 schools are currently without access to them. In the course of my own lengthy experience in psychiatry and during the workshops I gave to schools in Crumlin and Dublin 8 it was harrowing to see the number of children with mental ill health and ill health is rampant in some schools. There is a lot of suicidal thought and it is even more worrying to hear of hidden thoughts of self harm, especially among girls. We desperately need psychologists if we are to help them from an early age.

The Minister will be aware of the lack of psychologists but it is disappointing that he has failed to fund them adequately. Is it because parents will do anything - beg, borrow or steal - for their distressed children that we do not budget for this? That may be a cynical point but there has been so little effort on behalf of the extra 600 schools which need these services that it appears to be true. This is not how we should treat our children. In Sinn Féin's alternative budget, we provided for €3.5 million in education for psychologists and full restoration of guidance counsellor provision because students' mental health, from the cradle upwards, is very important.

The Minister's document gives no detail on the methodology of the allocation of resources under the new model for special educational needs. Several schools have contacted our spokesperson, Deputy Carol Nolan, seeking certainty on the resources to be allocated and the methodology the Department will use to decide what is allocated to whom. They also want to know how accommodating the Department will be when schools undergo a change in circumstances. These plans are being rolled out in September so schools need to know what is happening as soon as possible. They need to know how they can appeal against decisions they feel are unfair.

The goalposts seem to be changing in terms of deadlines and targets for access to higher education. When is the review of the student assistance fund going to be published? I understand the target date was the end of 2016 but there has been no report yet. The data plan for monitoring access to higher education was due by the end of the year and a report on barriers to lone parents accessing higher education was due before the 2017 budget. Neither has been published yet. Individuals from lower socioeconomic groups have been severely and unacceptably under-represented in higher education and the Department has failed to meet three deadlines for reports which potentially highlight access issues. These need to be done as soon as possible.

I welcome the fact that the DEIS scheme is bringing in new schools for the first time since 2009. There is a lack of clarity as to the criteria the Department is using to pick the schools and some schools which have not been included in the scheme feel they have a right to be included. Can the Minister explain the criteria and say how to go about an appeals mechanism in which the Department will look at a decision again? The DEIS scheme is a fundamental part of providing equality to our education system and it should be funded proportionately with that in mind. We must change the face of higher education. Last year, Senator Ruane remarked on the difference between listening to somebody from a wealthy background tell of how they were getting on in life, in secondary school or university, and the experience of counting the number of her own friends who had died because of suicide or depression. This fundamental difference in society is due to poverty and we cannot stand by and leave our children in poverty or they will never have the dreams or the hopes, or the encouragement and empowerment, to improve their lives. We have to tackle inequality and poverty but we are not doing it in the right way, across health, housing or education, which are the three fundamental areas in which we all need to feel secure, protected and supported.

In our submissions last year we set aside funding for increasing SNAs and resource teaching hours in the area of special educational needs because we need to put those needs first. I hope the Minister will take on board what has been said today and take another look at his Department's action plan. As it stands, it will not sort out the issues about which we have spoken. Education for all, access for all and equality for all are at the forefront of everything we do.