Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise two issues. The first is disturbing news regarding the crisis in teacher recruitment. I heard the INTO's John Boyle on "Morning Ireland" yesterday. Mr. Boyle commands widespread respect and support when it comes to teaching. The figures are shocking. There are a thousand vacancies due to difficulties finding staff in our primary school network. More frightening still is the fact that the figure is due to treble by next January. One of the points Mr. Boyle made was that the Salzburg report published in 2012 warned about a lack of planning for future teacher recruitment. Some 12 years later, we still have no planning for teacher recruitment. The impact on our children is profound. Special education teachers are being pulled away from the classes in which they work with the most vulnerable children in order to fill gaps.

Mr. Boyle described this as an absolutely enormous and chronic crisis. I am genuinely perplexed as to why the Government has not tackled this when it had a report 12 years ago highlighting a massive issue in terms of future planning for recruitment for teachers. We know there have been major issues in respect of salaries - in fairness, the entry-level salary issue has finally been fixed. However, we are now running into the housing crisis. We know teachers, in particular, have major problems in moving to larger cities because of the cost of housing. I have not seen a response from the Government to this. Our education system is now in crisis, even at a time when we have never had more money as a society. It is a massive issue and I call for an urgent debate on it.

I wish to highlight the related issue of housing. The quarter 2 social and affordable housing delivery figures from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage released on Friday are absolutely shocking. Just 1,174 of the promised 9,300 new-build social homes were completed by the end of June. That is 12.6% of the annual target. It is even worse than this time last year. It is very clear that the Government is nowhere near being able to hit the target for this year. It is a shockingly low figure. Of the 4,400 social and affordable homes to be delivered by local authorities, approved housing bodies and the Land Development Agency this year, just 552 were completed by the end of June, or 11.8% of the target. These figures are not just behind; they are chronically behind. This is the fifth year in a row that the Government has not hit its housing figures. We all know the impact of that and the statistics bear that out. We see it in the increase in homelessness figures that followed this Government throughout its lifetime. I again call for an urgent debate on housing.