Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Foley, to the Seanad Chamber. We are delighted to have her here. Since she has taken up the role she and her Department have really hit the ground running. There is no doubt that this is an area that has faced one of the biggest challenges. The massive challenge we have faced as a society has been to open back up. I will not say it was easy to lock everything down but what the Government has faced is this challenge of opening up gradually. We have all pulled together as a society.I would love to say that we have pulled together politically as strongly as we have as a society. The Government parties and the public are behind all of the work being done. The staff have done Trojan work in coming in throughout the summer to get their schools ready and to draw down the funding that was made available in the July stimulus. The challenges will be ongoing for staff. Special needs assistants, SNAs, in particular faced the challenge, potentially, of having vulnerable families themselves and being in close quarters with vulnerable children. I would like to see us put into place a long-term plan for SNAs that is different than that for the other staff members.

I have spoken to the Minister's Department on the issue of vulnerable families. I have been contacted, in particular by those who are on transplant waiting lists. Those waiting lists are not moving at the moment. There is someone within my own party who is waiting for his third transplant and is at home but still wants his children to have the school experience. However, there are others who may be lone parents and who are not willing to put their health on the line. We have to be more flexible and say that school is not for everyone at the moment and it is okay if a child is not going to school. I was delighted to hear from the Minister's Department and the head of schools that there is some flexibility around the number of days' absence, but we need to hear what that flexibility is and what it looks like. Are parents going to feel that the Department will come down hard on them if their child cannot go to school, not because the child is sick but because a parent, grandparent or someone close to them is sick?

On the issue of school transport, I can see the huge infrastructural challenges for us as a society. It is not a quick or easy fix. One thing that I do ask is that the Minister looks creatively at the issue. There are small projects and things that could be done to change things for people. For instance, a family from County Donegal contacted me about two schools, St. Eunan's College and Loreto Secondary School in Letterkenny, which had a private bus service. Like one of my colleagues mentioned earlier, the bus service was cancelled after 20 years. It had been run by Bus Éireann, but it moved into private ownership and the State did not have control over it. What I have been told is that it is less than a mile from a Local Link bus to the school, so if there were extensions of Local Link services, particularly in rural areas, that would help a lot of parents. It is not just the case that maybe both parents are working outside of the home, but that sometimes people plan their entire lives around the fact that they do not need a car because they have access to a bus service.

With regard to energy efficiency, schools have contacted me about the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, community energy efficiency programme. It has been difficult for local groups to administer this programme, and it needs matched funding. It would be ideal for schools to avail of this funding, but as the Minister is aware, they do not have the capital in place for the matched funding. Now that we have the funding for these capital programmes, let us put it into education. Not only will we be doing something for the environment, we will be lowering the costs of energy bills for schools and we can teach children about solar energy, wind turbines and about all of these things. It would be education in motion for them.

I thank the Minister for the briefings provided in relation to exams. There is a moment in time now where we have an opportunity as a country to look at exams, what they mean and what education should mean further down the road. What was put in place was the best we could do at the time, but we need to look to the future. Are we facing more inequality if we do not re-examine how we do the leaving certificate?