Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I, too, wish everybody all the best for 2021. Hopefully, it will be a better year than 2020. I hope also that it will be a better year for young people, particularly students. I have been particularly troubled over the past couple of weeks by the issue of a return to school. None of us really believed the schools would resume on 11 January and it transpired that that was the case. When the battle over the leaving certificate happened and we sat at home watching the debate on the notion of having a three-day week for some students, we knew that would not happen either. We could not have 60,000 young people, many of them taller than the Cathaoirleach and me, going in and out of school on a three-day week basis.

Ireland is the worst country in the world in terms of the Covid-19 pandemic. That said, the students who were forgotten in the entire debate until recently were the young people with special educational needs. In other countries, provisions are in place to allow children with special educational needs to return to school. What happened in recent days between the trade unions and the Department was nothing short of disgraceful. Hopes were raised among families, parents and the young people concerned that they would be going back to school but an hour or two later those hopes were dashed. That is not the way we should be running education. I appeal to the Leader to impress on the Minister that the next announcement has to be that something will happen. At this stage, I do not believe that special needs students will be back in school this coming Thursday. However, I hope that in a couple of weeks they will be back in a safe environment which will help them to progress, as opposed to regress.

I agree with other Senators who spoke about the leaving certificate. The mature and honest thing to do at this stage would be to have a twin-track approach to the leaving certificate. We need to give people the option of predicted grades because the students of 2021 are far more impacted than the students of 2020. The latter had the choice to opt for predicted grades. Let us give that option to this class of leaving certificate students. Let us be honest and upfront with them and let us do the right thing by them.