Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will raise two issues, if I may. The first is one about which the Leader has raised concerns, namely, what we are going to do about this year's leaving certificate. I welcome the very significant comments by the Ombudsman for Children who said very clearly that the leaving certificate should not proceed in the traditional format this year. Dr. Niall Muldoon said that current small adaptations to the traditional format were insufficient for children who had experienced two years of disrupted education due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I can testify to that. I have a son doing the leaving certificate this year. I think he will do fine but the fact is it is a two-year course and the first year suffered massive disruption. We know that online learning is not an ideal replacement for in-class learning. There are many students throughout the country who have not had the opportunity to cover the course. If they have not had the opportunity to cover the course, there needs to be a choice in this year's leaving certificate. We have heard people from all parties make this point but, crucially, the Government is making decisions today. I urge the Leader to re-emphasise the broad cross-party consensus we need to keep a hybrid model for the leaving certificate this year because it is the fairest option available.

The second issue is the standard of housing, particularly for those in receipt of the housing assistance payment, HAP, or the rental accommodation scheme, RAS. I have come across a couple of horrendous examples in Limerick. One really shocked me. The family has been living with the worst conditions in a HAP house for the past three years. The ceiling has fallen in, the cooker is smashed to bits, and water drips down from the top floor onto the fuse box so they cannot use any electronic equipment. The family has lived there four years. The house has failed seven separate HAP inspections but they are still in the house. I suggest one reason they are still in the house is because the landlord owns another 11 properties in the same building, all of which have HAP tenants in them. I suspect the consequences of having to find new homes for these people are such that they have been left there. There are six children in this house. There has been an infestation of scabies. These children have raw skin. They have put up with it for years. The thing is the State knows this. The house has failed seven HAP inspections and still the family is left there. I spoke to another poor young woman with a young child in a different, RAS, house which is literally freezing through the winter. It is so hard to get an inspection to show it is not up to RAS standard. These are not isolated examples. There is a real issue around housing standards linked to the housing crisis and I am calling for an urgent debate on this.