Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This week is dyslexic awareness week. In the audiovisual room yesterday, the Dyslexic Association of Ireland gave a very detailed presentation of the issues and struggles for dyslexic people. It brought up some very interesting figures. One in ten people in Ireland is dyslexic, which equates to around 920,000 people. We need strategies to include that cohort of society in programmes to improve reading skills and their interaction with services. A frightening statistic was that only 8% of teachers felt comfortable or properly equipped to deal with dyslexia in the classroom. The current college teaching programmes have been changed to include a module on dyslexic people, but the teachers who have been trained in the past 30 years now need to be brought back into the circle. It is a real challenge and a real issue for us. We need to ensure we provide further training to bring teachers up to standard so that they can work with pupils with dyslexia. Two teaching unions were present and they brought great insight into the difficulties they have in trying to rise to the challenge.

We need to have a hard debate in the Seanad on how to progress this issue because it affects three kids in every classroom. It probably affects people in this House and it affects 10% of society, but the issue has been cast aside for many years. The time has come to put dyslexic people into the mainstream. We need a major debate on how we are going to change our teaching policy and society and change the view of dyslexics in society. This has to start in the education forum and I ask the Leader to invite the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh, to the House for a comprehensive debate. We should ask him to bring forward a strategy to fill the gap that is there among teachers, because when 92% of teachers do not feel they are properly equipped, it is a massive issue. We also need a strategy for changing the view of dyslexics in society and to ensure they have a place and a home. Often, the slow boy in the class, or the one who seems just not to be up to it, is the brightest boy in the class. He is just wired slightly differently. I hope it can happen in the next few weeks as it is an important issue for me personally. We need to push it forward.