Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and thank her for coming to the House to focus for a short period on dyslexia. The minute I heard she was coming in I was reminded of the great autobiography of Micheal Heseltine, formerly a senior politician in the UK. He did not quite become leader of the Conservative Party for a load of internal reasons. In his autobiography he talked about hiding the issue of dyslexia and how he felt stupid. He was clever enough at five and six years of age to get a bag of sweets, empty them all out and sell them for a few pence or whatever it was then. He went on to create a great business. He always talked in the early years of his struggle and how he constantly hid, when he first entered the House of Commons, the difficulties of his own handwriting and his own coded stuff. It was okay for him because he developed his own shorthand but there were difficulties when meeting senior civil servants as he progressed in this career This happened only because he was so determined, focused, believed he had something and was exceptionally creative, which is what Senator Dolan has just referred to, and pursued it. He ended up having one of the biggest publishing houses in the UK and knew when to let go. He was a very creative person. He is now living in Winchester and he has created one of the greatest arboretums in Britain. He has a great interest in horticulture and gardening. I mention this as dyslexia should not be, and this proves it does not have to be, an impediment to getting on.

The reality we must face, especially older people of my generation who grew up with people with dyslexia, was that they hid it. Their parents felt their son or daughter was a failure. They were going to special schools and many parents did not want teachers to tell them their child had special needs. Thus we must support the parents and guardians of these children as well. We know from research that many children who have dyslexia, though not them all, also have higher rates of ADD, hyperactivity and issues with development of language. What happens for many who do not get early support is they opt out of education. They become difficult or troublesome because somehow that has not been recognised. Of course, parents have to buy into it too. A friend of mine retired was principal of a school on the northside a few years ago. She said the difficulty in this school was she could not get many parents to attend parent-teacher meetings. It was not to do with it being on the northside rather than the southside but was particular to the disadvantaged school she worked in. She said the parents she most wanted to speak did not come to the parent-teacher meetings. They did not engage. She asked a young lad one day why he did not have his uniform and he told her he woke up that morning and his mother was not there. Thus, we must see this in the round. I have a friend who teaches in a secondary school in Dublin and they are always interested in which primary schools the children are coming from. They can nearly tell you as there are some schools that do not have the same support. There are social issues around all that and support issues as well.

I thank the Minister of State for coming here and for the focus on it. She summed it up well when she said empowerment is at the heart of education, no child should be left behind and everyone has gifts. Everyone has a yearning for learning but they might not necessarily have the supports or the mechanisms for it. We need more support for teachers. We certainly need much more support for parents, especially in DEIS and other disadvantaged schools. This will improve the more we talk about it and the more we hear people who are successful talk about their difficulties with literacy, numeracy and other issues - dare I use the term "successful". I mean people who feel they have fulfilled their aspirations, hopes and dreams for their life; that is success in my book. It is good the Minister of State has come to the House and it is good we are having this conversation.