Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the Chamber for this debate. I pay particular tribute to Senator Fiona O'Loughlin, who has shown incredible leadership in the Irish Women's Parliamentary Caucus in looking at a number of issues. In particular, I pay tribute to the Senator and the others involved in the caucus for organising a day of conversations with many groups. It is particularly important that we have the caucus bringing this motion to the House today.

It is a very detailed motion with specific asks that the Labour Party very much supports. As mentioned earlier, it is important to reiterate the context in which this conversation takes place, namely, the Bill that Senator Clonan brought forward in July providing that very powerful but simple right of a person with disabilities to have a legal entitlement to treatment and supports, which they do not currently have in this country. Of course, the Labour Party also had its own motion in July with regard to carers. The abolition of the means test and radical reform of the domiciliary care allowance are among our key asks, as is the very clear statement on the need to recognise carers in this country.

When we look at the motion, we cannot divorce it from the reality of what is happening or will happen over the coming weeks, which is that 18 section 39 care organisations with hundreds of workers are being forced to go on strike to try to win decent pay and conditions. These are workers providing care to the most vulnerable people in the State and, once again, they are being forced to go out on strike following a number of work stoppages last year. The Government has repeatedly said it wants to stand by the section 39 organisations and stand by those workers, but it has turned the other way. There is a real pay cut. That is the offer on the table and it is a derisory one.

If there can be one plea from today's debate, it is that the Government has to get its act together with regard to the section 39 organisations. The State has chosen to devolve responsibility for working with the most vulnerable people to voluntary organisations. It has a responsibility to ensure that those organisations can function. We cannot wring our hands about the need for services and not look at the retention and recruitment crisis that is very real within those organisations. We very much need an appeal from this House that those workers should not be forced to go on strike but that they get a proper pay offer.

I am delighted the Minister of State is in the Chamber because while we are talking about care and the rights of disabled persons, I want to take the opportunity to talk about disability within the education system. We have seen a very welcome push within our communities on the north side of Dublin for an expansion of additional or special needs provision over the past two years. While that is very welcome, my direct appeal to the Minister of State is for greater joined-up thinking, or any sort of joined-up thinking, within her Department, particularly with regard to the issues that I have brought to her in the past and the new one that I want to bring to her today.I have spoken to the Minister of State in the past about the instance in Stoneybatter, Dublin 7, where we saw children in the access and inclusion model, AIMS programme, in the early years sector, who lost their school places in order to make way for special needs provision at primary school level. When I went to the Department of Education and asked what it was going to do about it, I was told that it was nothing to do with them because this is to do with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. It is simply not good enough. We have to look at the whole spectrum of children from when they are born right up to when they leave the education system, and not have that siloed approach.

The second key issue is that we have a school, St. Peter's National School, Phibsborough, a fantastic school that has approval for two new special classes. They cannot build those classes because they have serious pyrite issues in the school. The Department of Education has told them that the school cannot build the two special classes until the pyrite is dealt with. The Department has said it cannot deal with the pyrite unless the snags from 2007 are dealt with, and yet it has failed to engage with the school on those snags, or on the responsibilities of the Department regarding the completion of building works. I appeal to the Minister of State to ensure that the building section of her Department talks to the additional education needs section to ensure that these two units are built and that the school's issues are resolved.

The last thing I want to say is on the issue of reading schools. This is about disability within the education sector. We have seen a very clear perspective now within the Department of Education that is openly hostile to the existence of reading schools. Yet, when we talk to experts in this area, they talk about the incredible progress made by children who go to reading schools and who are in the first percentile of reading literacy. Yet when we ask for additional reading schools, or additional supports for the existing reading schools, we are constantly met with rejection. I ask the Minister of State for a review of that policy. I know that work on a paper was conducted and that a number of reading schools were extremely upset at the manner in which work on that paper was conducted and that there was a failure to properly engage with those reading schools when the Department of Education put that paper together. There is a serious question now as to how we deal with those particular disabilities within the Department of Education.