Congratulations to Deputy Quinlivan and everybody on the disability matters committee for this great document. I have read it. There is so much in it. It must have been a huge amount of work. It is very thorough. My colleague Deputy Liam Quaide is not able to speak today but he would love to have been able to do so. One of the things that struck me with this report is that in schools, education and in this place, we often silo things. The disability matters committee has done a wonderful report. We in the education and youth committee are down in committee room 4 most weeks, and we are looking at inclusive education. It is imperative that these two pieces of work meet each other and that we do not stay siloed. This is not about maths, Irish or English in school. It is serious and is about people's lives. I would love to see what comes out of our report and how they speak to one another. They are independent pieces of work but I have no doubt there will be so many things that are similar between them. The only difference is that ours will be for primary and secondary school and will not examine third level. That is the missing conversation that never happens in here. What happens for young people who go on to third level, whether to an apprenticeship or college or to any institution or course? The Disability Federation of Ireland has said that 25% of adults with disabilities have now completed third level in comparison to 32% of the general population. We are still not on a par. We need to ensure that tertiary education is as available as primary and secondary. It is not so easy. That conversation definitely needs to happen. I would love to see the further and higher education committee, which I attend although I am not a member, looking at the situation as well. On education and children with disabilities, not a day goes by that somebody does not contact my office about the state of things. I just got off the phone with a mother where the school clearly does not want the child to be there. Deputy Boyd Barrett said to trust the schools but in this scenario I do not. This poor child has been ostracised. I am obviously not going to name them. There are examples of poor practice around the country because of lack of leadership and lack of challenges. We need to make sure that if this is the situation, it is called out. For the most part, schools are doing absolutely excellently. However, not every school is suitable for every single child. If that is the case, how do we make sure a child does not continue in an education setting that ruins them as an individual? Separate to this, when I was a school completion co-ordinator, we had the iScoil programme. It is not for children with disabilities but for children who left school and were not in school for six months at a time. They would come to us broken, thinking they were stupid and thinking they were not able to learn anything. The system broke them because it did not understand them as individuals and their needs and rights. When they would come to us, we would have to build their confidence so they would know they are not stupid, and there is a place for them in this world and for every single person. We need to challenge that in every aspect of our education system at primary, secondary and third level, so nobody feels they are not able to be valued and have a place in that. The systems in this world have to fit around people. People do not have to be jammed into a system that is wrong for them. That is so important, particularly for people with disabilities who already face so many challenges in other aspects of their lives. Over the course of being a TD, I have been struck by the different types of challenges that people have when they have a disability. For example, on reading, there are reading classes that are being closed, or are not open or are full, because they are not being invested in. The vision is to be inclusive so that the local school will be the inclusive school and children will just go to their local school. That is fantastic but in the meantime, until that is a reality, we need to be safeguarding those reading classes and making sure that children have access to that. There are children who are going on to second level who have not managed to access or get through the primary school curriculum. They are not able to read it because they have not been given the skills to do that. We are using programmes like Reading Recovery, which is being struck off in other countries, and we are investing a quarter of a million euro or more in it. We need to look at structured literacy and how that happens, and why it is effective in the long term for children. While I am talking about books, I cannot ever forget about the young person who came to the education committee and told us that he got his Braille books the week before he was doing the leaving certificate, even though they were ordered in fourth year. I just cannot get over that. There is a system that shows an absolute breakdown for a child, that they would not have their books for the two years of studying the leaving certificate. I have mentioned mild general learning disability schools so many times. I did not know they existed until I was a TD. Now I know. I have been at one and was at a beautiful graduation in Scoil Eoin in Crumlin last week. I was trying not to cry too much since it was not my children, but it was absolutely gorgeous. Those young people have left that school with their heads held so high, with absolute support, love and care. They are going to meet the world right where it is and will be able to do whatever they want in the future because of the care they got in that school. I know we want to have the local school being the inclusive school, but until that is an actual reality we cannot close those schools because those children will not get the same love and care in a school with 1,000 pupils. There is just no way they can. There is a balancing act. When we transition into the new system we would like to have, we need to make sure that until we are definitely able to deliver on that side, we do not put those children in jeopardy. Today in the education committee the teacher and SNA unions were in. One of the challenges they have is the lack of time for planning. They do not just rock up on a Monday morning at 9 o'clock and decide what they are doing today. They have to have plans. That needs to be built in, particularly if they are supporting children with additional needs. It is about what needs to be done, when, what is the routine and who is doing what - all those things. That needs to be built in to the planning week, as does the overall view of how inclusive education is done in a school. It is the culture of a school and who manages it. When the principal is running around doing all the other things, who is the person who instils that culture in a school? The principal is that person but she or he cannot do everything. We need a way of making sure that culture is there in schools. We also need to make sure for any school that is being opened, a special school or special class, that the training is there for those staff members. Teachers who are newly qualified or who are very long in the system are telling me time and again that they did learn anything about this in college, yet they are expected to go in and work with the child when they have no idea how to manage or do that. It is not good enough. We are failing the teacher or SNA and we are failing the child. We need to make sure that the training and CPD is there for the best chance for everybody in the situation. I agree that it has to be rights-based and needs-based. It needs to be about fairness and equality, but also equity. We cannot give everybody the same because some people need more than others. There is a fine balance as to how we make sure that everybody gets exactly what is appropriate to them to make sure they are on an equal footing with everybody else. When I was visiting a school a very long time ago, I saw a lovely picture of children looking over a wall. You just saw their faces across the wall, but on the other side you saw children of different heights. Some were standing on a higher or lower ladder or stool, but they all looked the same from the other side of the wall. It was showing what equity is. Equity is to give people what they need in order for them to be on an equal footing with everybody else. That is not only for primary and secondary school but also for third level. Early intervention classes set children up to succeed in primary school. We cannot see them closed until we have proper alternatives in our primary schools.

Sentiment score: 0.13