Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is welcome. I thank the Chair of our committee, Deputy Kehoe. I have enjoyed sitting on the committee. We work well as a team and do in-depth work. Some of the other committee members have spoken before me. It has been eye-opening to see things from everyone's perspective. We have disagreements and people come from different perspectives.One of the things we can agree on is that there are changes needed in the education system. Work is under way on a report on reform of the leaving certificate. I would welcome an update from the Minister on that. There is a little bit of siloing going on regarding leaving certificate reform in terms of where it sits and who is making the decisions around it.

Some Senators spoke about online learning. I believe that the future of education increasingly will be online. The Department needs to embrace that. There is no way of educating our young people unless they are allowed to use those devices. Senator Maria Byrne spoke about the school she is involved with, where since the start of the pandemic students have been using iPads or other similar devices. Likewise this is happening in a school which one of my children attends. It is about teaching a healthy respect for devices, electronics and online learning. It can go really wrong. It was heartbreaking to watch the parents of Eden Heaslip speak about their devastating loss and the bullying of Eden that carried on after school into his homeplace, which led to him to feel there was no other option but to take his own life and to die by suicide. We all know of those stories. So many are related to bullying. There is no doubt but that this has continued on throughout the pandemic and, largely, gone unseen. We probably do not know the full extent of it, although we all know that it is a matter that is close to the Minister's heart. I welcome her announcements in regard to dealing with and tackling bullying.

The Union of Students in Ireland, USI, came before the committee. They told us that one of the issues that they felt was a real legacy of the pandemic was isolation and a lack of communication with young people. As members will be aware, I have been chairperson of Home Education Network Ireland. I know hundreds of families across the country who choose to home educate their children and have done for many years. It is really successful. It is not always the best place for every family. Every family has to make a decision. Constitutionally, they are entitled to make that decision about how to educate their children, but so many were given the opportunity to make that decision and it was foisted upon them and their children. That has not been good for some families, particularly those that are already struggling and young people who are already struggling. On the day the Minister was last in the Seanad before Christmas, the report of the Joint Committee on the Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community was launched. The low number of Travellers who reach leaving certificate is of huge concern, as are the numbers of Travellers who go on to third-level education. In primary and second school, the number of children who are not getting a full night's sleep because of their living conditions is also a matter of concern. One particular family is living in a one-bedroom house where four children are sleeping on the floor, another is sleeping on the sofa and two others are sleeping in the bedroom. The teenagers in that family fall asleep on the sofa in the afternoon because of a lack of sleep. That has to be tackled. We need to make sure that this report and other reports from the Joint Committee on the Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community are constantly reviewed. That is a commitment. The chairman of the education committee has given an assurance that chairpersons of committees across the board will meet in regard to the Traveller community.

Earlier today on the Order of Business I raised the Yellow Flag programme. I have written to the Department of Education with regard to supporting it. I understand that the Minister of State with responsibility for rural and community development, Deputy Joe O'Brien, has today spoken to the Minister for Children, Disability, Equality, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, in regard to further support. This is a programme on which both Departments could collaborate in some way. The programme is about seeking to educate young people, children and teachers, about not only identity-based violence but racism leading to bullying. Some 27% of Traveller parents said that their children had experienced bullying that was identity-based. The parents of Eden Heaslip have testified that some of the bullying he endured was around religion. The issue of bullying in regard to religion came up at the committee. It is something I had not considered before. We have to make sure we are not segregating our children and that we are educating people together to appreciate and tolerate other people's beliefs. That is important. The Yellow Flag programme has been turned away by 150 schools because they do not have the resources to support it. The programme is dependent on funding from local authorities and, therefore, it is very much self-selecting. This means that schools where there is a real diversity of children coming from many different areas are the only ones providing these programmes. We should ensure that all schools, children and teachers understand identity-based bullying, which may often lead to violence of various sorts. Those are a few of the issues that are really important to me.

Another issue highlighted by the pandemic is our high dependence on school transport. Owing to the pandemic, we had to reduce capacity on school transport, and while that was the right decision it meant that many children had to be driven to school. I would like to see a collaboration between the Departments of Education and Transport in this area. I made a budget submission for additional funding for school transport. If we had a revolutionary school transport system in this country, it could end congestion and emissions problems. Some 30% of traffic in the mornings is attributed to children being brought to school. Children are entitled to school transport if they live 4.8 km from their local school based on ethos or 3.7 km from their local primary school. That means that within cities and large conurbations there often is no school transport and this is creating significant congestion. This would be healthier for our children in that they could walk to a bus stop and no longer be stuck in cars. There would be less idling of cars outside of schools and this could contribute to the emissions reduction that the Department of Education has committed to under the climate action plan.