Families across this country are already at breaking point. I want the Tánaiste to imagine he is in a family that already counts every single euro going grocery shopping, maybe filling the car if you have one, only turning on your heating for a small amount of time in the day and then all of a sudden the President of the United States goes to war with Iran and you can no longer afford to do many of those things. This is the reality for families across this country. Already before this war, there were 320,000 households in arrears. At this exact moment, the Government has now written to schools to ask them to charge families to sit the leaving certificate, the leaving certificate applied and the junior cycle exams. It is €109 for the junior certificate and €116 to sit the leaving certificate and the leaving certificate applied. Families, when they budget to the penny, have not budgeted for this. This has to be paid up in a five-week period. It is something that was not done during Covid. It was a temporary situation but we were able to manage without it and we can manage again. At a time when costs are so expensive, and families are really tight, this was an unexpected thing. Schools have contacted me to say they were not expecting this. It has come out of the blue, and now families are contacting them saying they do not know how they will pay this. This is at a time when parents are saying it is the most expensive it has ever been in the supermarket, when they are not able to pay the electricity bill or using it so little or are not heating their homes. There are so many choices they have to make. We have heard that adults are reducing their food intakes to make sure their children are able to eat. At a time when this is an impossible place for some people to live, to introduce those costs is absolutely scandalous.

Sentiment score: -0.08