Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. It is great to get to address her for a second time. It is a great opportunity to get to look at what has happened recently and to delve a little further into the reopening of our schools and other recent issues. I fear, however, that what we are now seeing in primary and secondary education are the chickens coming home to roost and all the issues Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have been putting on the long finger for a couple of years.

Class sizes have been a consistent cause of concern for teachers, their unions and the Opposition in this House, and here we are now with class sizes affecting not just educational outcomes but also, possibly, medical outcomes. Teachers are genuinely concerned about their health and that of their immediate contacts. We heard again and again from Fianna Fáil when it was in opposition that class sizes were not acceptable, yet during the confidence and supply Government's time in office we saw nothing delivered. I hope we will see something delivered during the Minister's time in office.

There is a rumour going around that class sizes will potentially increase in budget 2021. A number of teachers and parents have contacted me about this. I hope the Minister will be able to put the rumour to bed because it is causing a lot of distress. It would be great if we could get clarity on this because I have heard from people who are deeply distressed about it. I hope the Minister will be able to make a commitment that class sizes will be in fact reduced in budget 2021.

There is also the failure to address pay disparity, which has now led one of the second level teachers' unions, the ASTI, to ballot for strike action as they face into the unknown teaching in the Covid pandemic. As anyone who has been an active trade union member will know, workers, especially essential workers such as teachers, do not ballot for strike action lightly. I therefore ask the Minister for Education and Skills to listen and not to take the concerns of 17,500 second level teachers lightly.

I also ask the Minister not to allow the issue of teaching post-Covid to be used as an eraser with which to remove other long-standing issues in education which her own party when in opposition, and then in government from the Opposition benches, told us had to be rectified. I am speaking specifically about the treatment of two vastly undervalued groups of workers within education, namely, SNAs and school secretaries. The pandemic has shone a very harsh light on the precarious nature of work in Ireland - in our retail sectors, our tourism industry and all across our tertiary economy - but what we have never really acknowledged is that precarious employment happens everywhere and happens to people directly employed in schools. The vast majority of Ireland's school secretaries work for poor pay, and some are denied the respect of the most basic of employment rights such as secure contracts, pension rights and even sick pay. This week we have had great discussion about sick pay and mandatory sick pay. My colleagues in the Dáil proposed the Labour Party Bill for sick pay for all. It is concerning, as I have said already in this House, to see that that will be kicked to touch for six months. Workers need sick pay now, during a global pandemic, not in six months' time. The school secretaries' campaign, supported by Fórsa, is for a guaranteed wage and security of work. This is not asking much; it is simply to acknowledge the roles these workers play as key administrators, supporters and staff in school. All those roles are valuable. I am sure the Minister, as a former teacher herself, will acknowledge this. I ask her to make it a priority in her term to formalise school secretaries' contracts and provide them with the entitlements and protections equivalent to grade 3 or grade 4 of the Department's pay scale, which is only appropriate.

Another key group of workers in schools who face precarity are our SNAs. This group of workers is deeply under-recognised and underappreciated. In the past few days I spoke to an SNA who said to me she felt as though SNAs were an afterthought when planning was done for primary and secondary schools. There is all the documentation for procedures to follow in our schools but, with all due respect, teachers and staff following good procedures do not necessarily change the reality of our schools. It is near impossible, and in some cases dangerous, for SNAs and teachers to remain 2 m away from students, so I ask the Minister to give that consideration.

This week with my Labour Party colleagues, Senator Bacik and Deputy Ó Ríordáin, I attended a meeting with Involve Autism, which is active in Dublin 6 and Dublin 6W and surrounds. We spoke about the appalling shortage of ASD classes in the area. Out of 30 primary schools in the area, just one had an ASD class. We also discussed the group's concerns about the section 37A process. That issue is not limited to this area; the shortage of ASD classes and the reluctance and reticence of schools to step up and take on ASD classes is massively problematic. It is a national issue that is causing incredible stress for families across Ireland. The legislation gives the Minister the power to open ASD classes directly. Is she willing to step in and ensure ASD provision for students across the country?

I hope the Minister will take some of these concerns into account. They are quite specific, I know. A wide range of issues have been discussed today, but these are concerns that are causing massive distress for students, our school secretaries and our SNAs and their classes. We have enormous class sizes.They simply have to go down in numbers. We cannot increase them any more. It is affecting our children's education and, as I said, class sizes are now not just affecting educational outcomes but could affect medical outcomes as well.