Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Mental health has always been the Cinderella of the health service in this country, or until recently anyway. It has been underfunded and under-provided for. I have great confidence that the Minister of State, with her knowledge and background and the experience she has brought to her role, will do everything in her power to address that. Mental health has never been more to the fore, because of the pandemic in which we find ourselves, with the enormous strain and pressure on vast stretches of society. It is not just about people who have lost their jobs, although that is a major mental burden for them in trying to make ends meet; there are also people who would never have experienced, nor have expected to experience, the kind of personal isolation that is now part of their everyday life. We need to be careful with the restrictions we have put in place and with how we manage them and reach out to people.

I am very conscious that the younger cohort of people have suffered more than any. Whether young adults, students or people who are in or out of college, they are under enormous pressure.I appeal today to the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, ASTI, to go back into those talks and engage fully and appropriately. No dispute was ever solved by people walking away from each other. For sure, it will take compromise and people will have to take a leap of faith and move beyond their entrenched positions. Teachers, parents and students all want this process to happen and have a successful outcome. From discussions I have had with them, leaving certificate students want a twin-track approach. They want the predicted grades. I do not for a minute underestimate how difficult that will be on teachers. It will, however, be equally difficult for children to sit an exam when they have not had the appropriate face-to-face education time to do it. I appeal to all sides to make that happen.

I am also concerned about the cohort of students who did their leaving certificate last year and who are now in their first year of college. I am concerned with the anecdotal information coming to me through my constituency office about the level of dropouts. I ask the Minister of State to speak to the Minister with responsibility for higher education, Deputy Harris, and engage with colleges to try to understand if we will have a higher dropout rate this year. She might ask him to engage with the colleges to establish how many first-year students have disengaged from college courses between the first and second terms. That information must be available.

What level of outreach have colleges been doing with first-year students? Perhaps, the Minister of State is best placed to advance this case. I have heard crazy stories of young adults who have left the shelter and protection of home, and the controlled system of post-primary schools, and gone into what we all know to be the open environment of third level colleges. They have not had that experience, however. They do not have anybody to rely on or to support them. In many cases, they are sitting in college accommodation, isolated, with no interaction other than what is happening online.

I have heard of cases where certain lecturers are putting the course online, effectively giving students the book and telling them to go and learn it and do the exams. I am sure they are isolated cases. However, I want the Minister, Deputy Harris, to engage fully with the third level sector and come forward to us, insofar as he can, with information about the important matter of dropouts and the mental health issues that have been felt by those in first year, and try to understand what that engagement has been, or in many cases, has not been, with first year students.

There are obviously huge implications for this year’s CAO. I heard the Minister on the radio today regarding a welcome announcement that there will be 2,000 extra places. Are those 2,000 places on top of the extra places that were provided for last year? Are they in addition to the 8,000 or 9,000 additional places? What impact will that have on addressing the significant burden that is coming on the CAO? The students who drop out this year and do not complete courses will no doubt be back on the CAO again. There is, therefore, a real pressure point. It is adding significantly to the mental pressure and torture on the minds of our youngest in society. I appeal to the Minister of State to engage with the Minister with responsibility for higher education on the basis of the mental health impact on those students.