Lá Fhéile Bríde sona daoibh go léir. I hope you all have a very good St. Brigid's Day.
Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Agus duit féin.
Go raibh míle maith agat. I call Deputy McDonald.
The Government's decision that students will not have choice this year for their leaving certificate is appalling. It is a massive mistake not to allow a hybrid or blended model and not to give a choice to students between traditional exams and calculated grades. Furthermore, the way in which this decision was communicated was equally awful. It was cynically leaked to the media late last night. Stressed-out students who had waited for months for the Government to make a decision found out through social media or from a WhatsApp message that the die had been cast. An incredible level of disrespect has been shown to these young people. Their voices have been ignored and set aside. The Government has failed fundamentally to understand the level of disruption they have been subjected to. Fairness is the victim in all of this.
Students have been coherently calling for choice and for a blended approach because it makes sense and because it is fair. This year's leaving certificate students have had their entire senior cycle, both fifth year and sixth year, disrupted by Covid-19. They have had to overcome massive academic challenges and that is before we even consider the incredible pressure on their mental health. Students faced two months of full closures last year and had out-of-class education, which is not comparable to in-classroom learning. Many struggled with a lack of devices and WiFi connection issues. On top of all that, they had the stress of living through a global pandemic.
They were high levels of absences for students and teachers because of self-isolation and infection, which has had a massive impact. To this day, it is having an impact in the classroom. The Irish Second–Level Students Union, ISSU, surveyed more than 40,000 students and almost half of them reported that they had missed between one and three classes per day on average. That disruption continues. There have been huge problems with substitute teacher cover. In some schools, mock exams have been pushed back because the students are far behind.
None of this should be swept under the carpet. Students want choice. That is what happened last year. A huge number of students, when given the choice, chose to sit the traditional exam but they also had the calculated grades. Covid has affected different schools, different students and different teachers in different subjects in very different ways. Additional options within a paper do not fairly compensate for all of that. It is obvious that what we need here is a choice that affords students the option of a written exam or calculated grades. None of this is plain sailing. There are challenges but I do not accept that any of them are insurmountable. Is cinneadh uafásach é leanúint ar aghaidh le hardteistiméireacht traidisiúnta. Cuireadh isteach go mór ar mhic léinn le dhá bhliain anuas. Teastaíonn rogha uathu. Teastaíonn ardteistiméireacht hibrid uathu. The Government has made the wrong call and I am asking the Taoiseach - in fact, I am appealing to him - on behalf of every leaving certificate student to do the fair thing, which is to give students choice.
I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. Last week, I was asked similar questions on this and the most pressing demand, correctly, from Members of the Opposition and generally was for clarity and certainty for students as early as possible. Students were uppermost and of primary concern for Government in reaching its decision.
The Minister, in her engagement with students and indeed with parents, teachers, school management bodies and others, was asked primarily by students to deal with and respond to four issues. One was the need for clarity and certainty. The second was greater choice within the written, oral and practical examinations. The third was grade inflation in order that the students of 2022 would not be disadvantaged compared to those who sat the leaving certificate in 2021 and the fourth was accredited grades. They wanted that option between accredited grades and a written leaving certificate exam.
I acknowledge it has been a very challenging year for students, with Covid-19 and its impact on the learning environment. One of the biggest challenges this year to an accredited grades system was that it could not have been applied as fairly as it was last year, because 25% of the students did not do the junior certificate and their data would not have been available for an accredited grades alternative. I have not seen anybody put forward a meaningful alternative to that. This is important because we would be developing an alternative system that would not use the students' own data, which was used last year, which is very important for comparability and standardisation.
The Minister has now opted to give very wide choice in both the written examinations, to such an extent that most papers will have their content cut by one third. Students should look to the paper of 2021 as a guide and full details of the syllabus and so on will be published in the coming days by the State Examinations Commission.
Instead of having to answer all ten questions on each mathematics paper, candidates will only have to answer six. With regard to the additional choice through additional questions on the biology paper, candidates only have to answer eight questions instead of 11 and furthermore, can focus on a reduced range of mandatory activities. In English paper 1, candidates will have to answer only half the number of comprehension questions as would have been the case and in English paper 2, they only have to answer on any two sections, instead of on all three, which is a reduction of one third.
This represents a dramatic widening of choice compared to that of those who sat in 2019 or 2018. People should not understate the significance of the adjustments being made to the paper and the oral and practical examinations. Then one had the accredited grades. Ní raibh aon rogha ag an Rialtas, i ndáiríre. Bhí córas eile ó thaobh accredited grades dodhéanta agus ní bheadh sé féaráilte do na mic léinn go háirithe. It would not have been fair to the students, primarily, to have pursued the accredited grades option.
I remember here last year everybody was very angry about the concept or prospect of historic profiling of schools as a basis for an accredited grades system. Collectively, it was taken out of such a system. It is challenging times, without question, in terms of Covid-19, but we have given certainty and clarity as early as we possibly could and much earlier than last year, in line with what people were asking us to do then.
What students have asked for and a point on which they have been consistent was choice, which meant a choice between a traditional exam in whatever form and calculated grades. That was deemed appropriate and necessary last year because of the Covid disruption and the truth is that this year's leaving certificate students have been similarly disrupted. There has been significant disruption to the learning of fifth-year and sixth-year students.
If the Taoiseach listened to what students were telling him, he would be left in no doubt that when they asked the Minister for choice, that is what they meant. Yes, they wanted clarity. They wanted a clear expression from Government that they had been heard and that fairness would guide the decision of Government. Nothing the Taoiseach has said to me explains away the fact that he has failed to give that choice to our students.
I reiterate that students have been through an incredible disruption. This has had an effect, as the Taoiseach conceded, on their learning.
The time is up.
It has also had a deep effect on so many of them personally. They have asked the Government to simply be as fair with them this year as it was with students last year. I appeal to the Taoiseach again. This is the wrong decision and I invite the Taoiseach and the Minister to reverse it in the interests of those students.
The Minister met the students on quite a number of occasions and engaged with them. There were four requests. I have gone through the four. The Minister has been able to respond positively to three of those four requests. On the fourth, which relates to accredited grades, that simply was not possible.
I explained to Deputy McDonald, as she knows well, that there is a huge challenge to the accredited grades option because of the fact that 25% of this year's leaving certificate-----
There are options.
Deputy McDonald did not spell them out. I have not heard them from her in three weeks.
The Minister has received them.
Deputy McDonald keeps pointing-----
Deputy Ó Laoghaire has written to the Minister.
Deputy McDonald keeps pointing to her colleague.
Deputy Ó Laoghaire is our spokesperson on education.
The Minister has received them.
Please.
I did not interrupt. The bottom line is I have not got a coherent cogent alternative from Deputy McDonald-----
There are assessment tools that are used in the North.
-----in the past three weeks in relation to that core point.
The Minister has them.
I accept what-----
But the Taoiseach is not the Minister for Education.
I accept what people said-----
The Minister for Education has the options.
-----when the issue was raised in the House in the past while. The point I am making is that there is a huge issue there. People do not want historic profiling; in other words, that results would be based on those of previous students in schools. Nobody wants that. That was the collective view here.
That is correct.
As a result, there is a real challenge in terms of the 25%.
I thank the Taoiseach. The time is up now.
It could not have been done as fairly as it was done last year. That is the point.
It is done elsewhere.
Every other European jurisdiction, from what I know, and the UK are going back to the pre-pandemic assessment approaches that they had.
The time is up, please.
Assessment tools.
They are gone back to their pre-Covid assessment tools.
They are given a choice.
We are not out of line with what is happening across Europe and the United Kingdom.
The Taoiseach is out of line with fairness.
My office, like everyone else's, has been receiving lots of calls and emails since the news about reverting to the traditional leaving certificate for this year was leaked last night. Students and parents are extremely anxious and confused. Many of them are angry not only about what has been announced but, just as importantly, they are also angry about how that happened. One parent told me that their child has lost almost all of their resource hours because of the pandemic, and she is extremely distressed at today's news. Many are similarly upset.
As a former secondary school teacher, the Taoiseach knows that the leaving certificate is a two-year examination and that the curriculum covers those two years. This year's cohort of leaving certificate students have not had two years to prepare. There have been lengthy school closures as a result of teachers and pupils being either ill or close contacts. In addition, students whose education was seriously disrupted because of Covid did not experience the pandemic equally. Those who were lucky enough to have access to remote teaching and, perhaps, even grinds during lockdowns do not compare with others who did not even have broadband or a tablet to keep up with coursework.
Last week, two separate reports from the Ombudsman for Children and the special rapporteur on child protection emphasised that while school closures had a negative impact on all children, they disproportionately impacted on disadvantaged and marginalised children. Today's announcement heaps further disadvantage onto that. I heard the Minister for Education speaking earlier. She stated she had abandoned the hybrid system because she did not feel it would be as fair as last year. Fair to whom?
In terms of identifying what the solution should be, there must be a genuine effort to recognise the impact Covid has had over the past two years and this must be more than just tinkering with examination papers. None of us believes that this is straightforward or easy.
Was the hybrid system ever on the table during the consultations? Given that we have known for the past two years that 25% of leaving certificate students did not sit the junior certificate, were contingency measures either considered or put in place in the past 12 months? How can the Taoiseach claim that the leaving certificate will be fair this year given what we all know about the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on marginalised and disadvantaged students?
First, it is about that very point of fairness. If one had proceeded on historic profiling to get an accredited grades system, that would have disadvantaged those disadvantaged students even more than is the case now. Students were very concerned about a number of things. One was grade inflation and that there would be a comparison with last year's results and outcomes in terms of grade inflation last year. The Minister has met that concern. Through the marking scheme and the standardisation that will apply here, the students of 2022 will not receive lower grades than the aggregate, as opposed to 2021. That grade inflation issue has been met. The State Examinations Commission, working with the Minister, has worked on that issue, which was an important one in terms of progression to further education, third level education, apprenticeships and so on, which is an important consideration once students have finished their leaving certificate.
The choice is not tinkering with the examination. Cutting the content by one third is not tinkering. Reducing the content of each paper by more than a third is not tinkering. These are very radical changes that will give significant choice to students not only in terms of sitting and answering questions - there will be reduced questions and more options - but in terms of study on specific syllabuses and revision. The same applies to the orals and practicals. As the Deputy will know, the orals and practicals are taking place during the holiday time to ensure students do not lose school time. For example, in the oral Irish, the scraith pictiúr is halved from 20 to ten. These are significant changes that will help students and will take account of what the Deputy correctly said has been a very challenging two years for this cohort of students. In terms of the papers they will be sitting and the orals and practicals they will be participating in, the burden will be reduced significantly to take account of the challenges this year's students have had to face.
On the accredited grades, that was looked at. It was on the table. It was looked at by the Minister and her officials, in particular. It is a very complex issue that cannot be wished away either. The whole accredited grades system is very complex and challenging. Added to the situation this year is the fact 25% of the students did not sit the junior certificate. Some people might say they did a completion certificate and so on, but not all teachers gave grades in those completion certificates. That would not have been available either as a mechanism to be used in accredited grades system. To a large extent, they were running out of options when it came to an alternative accredited grades system, primarily because 25% of that cohort did not do the junior certificate.
The two reports, the report of the Ombudsman for Children and the report of special rapporteur on child protection, emphasised the point about all children being impacted but the ones who were most impacted were those who were disadvantaged and marginalised. Where did that come into the thinking on what has been presented? Where are they specifically represented? What about the parent who contacted me this morning about their child who did not get resource hours and who will never get those hours back? That is about charting a course for a student to get to leaving certificate who may not have an ambition to go to college. It is an achievement to get the leaving certificate. Where is that factored in? There is a significant issue in terms of the assessment for those children and for students who did not have, for example, access to broadband or a tablet. We all remember the discussions we had on families who were relying on accessing information on a mobile phone and people sharing devices. That was this cohort as well. Where will that be recognised specifically in this? Where is the choice for that cohort?
First, I acknowledge the reports of the ombudsman and the special rapporteur in terms of their conclusions and observations in respect of children and students from certain backgrounds without access to technology or other factors. The impact the pandemic had on them was particularly profound. Not all students do the leaving certificate applied but for the cohort doing the leaving certificate applied, the scaling factor applied to the written papers, for example, was increased from 1.5 to 1.25, so in all papers that the various cohorts will be doing, adjustments will be made to take account of the challenges that they faced. That is why, for example, we were determined in January to reopen the schools. For a large period around this time last year, the schools were closed and we were in level 5 completely. The adjustments are very significant. Cutting by one third the content of most papers will give wide choice. There is also the fact the standardisation will ensure there will not be that disadvantage when compared with those who completed it last year.
We move to the Regional Group. I call Deputy Canney.
I would like to raise with the Taoiseach a very important issue in regard to the Government's plan to make a once-off tax free €1,000 bonus payment to front-line healthcare workers and the concerns that not all of our front-line workers will be included in this bonus payment. Take, for example, a letter I received from Ability West in Galway which provides services right across the region. It stated that it is with great shock that it is beginning to realise that section 39 disability service providers will potentially be excluded from the once-off bonus payment. This is divisive and it is also creating a tier within our health service provision, which is very worrying and very dangerous. Where people are providing care in residential services, respite services, day services and multidisciplinary services, it is important they get the same recognition as section 38 or HSE directly employed front-line workers.
Many workers involved in these hospitals who were gowned up and dealing with people who had Covid, bringing them their food and taking care of them, and they were contracted in by subcontractors. Will they be included?
A huge shadow has been cast over the scheme. It is right that the scheme should be brought in but it has to be thought out fully to make sure that the people who deserve it will get it, and that we do not make sections within our health service among those who provided the same type of service right across the board. We think about people in nursing homes who were gowned up every day and who provided all the protocols that were needed. How come they may not be included in this plan?
People will ask how far do we go with this but, at the end of the day, we have a situation where the Government is bringing forward a plan and the plan does not seem to be fair to everybody. When we entered into Covid, the restrictions and everything that was applied to them, the one thing we said was that we are all in this together. If there is going to be a bonus for healthcare workers, it needs to be there for all healthcare workers who provided so much service to the State. I also believe family carers should be considered for the scheme. The Taoiseach might ask how far do we go with it. We need to know, before the scheme is introduced, that all of those who made a contribution, who were gowned up, who were in the situation where they were putting their own health at risk for the sake of others and to save others, are all included in the scheme.
I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. As he correctly said, in recognition of the efforts of the general public, volunteers and, indeed, all workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, and in remembrance of people who lost their lives due to Covid-19, the Government announced last week a once-off public holiday that will take place on Friday, 18 March this year, and a new annual public holiday from 2023 in celebration of St. Brigid's day.
The Government also announced the Covid-19 recognition payment for front-line public sector healthcare workers to recognise their unique role during the pandemic. The payment of €1,000 will not be subject to tax, USC or PRSI. It will be ring-fenced for staff ordinarily on site in healthcare environments exposed to Covid-19 in the period from 1 March 2020 to 30 June 2021. Those eligible for the Covid-19 recognition payment are general front-line public healthcare workers who are directly employed by the public health sector and worked or trained in environments exposed to Covid-19 or clinical settings. Aside from the staff covered by that, staff also intended to be covered by this arrangement are home carers working for and contracted out to the HSE, and agency staff who worked in clinical settings for the HSE, including agency nurses, doctors, cleaners and paramedics. Those working in long-term disability care facilities, under section 39, and in public-private voluntary nursing homes and hospices are also covered. The arrangements for processing this decision are currently being finalised by the Department of Health and the HSE. It is challenging, without a doubt.
The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform made the point that it is difficult to know where to draw a line once it goes beyond healthcare workers. The core objective was to respond, in particular, to the front-line healthcare workers who were faced with challenging situations in acute hospital settings throughout the pandemic, because of the various surges and waves of the pandemic and of different variants, which caused enormous distress, with people putting themselves at risk on a consistent basis over a long time and through the entirety of the pandemic.
The bank holiday arrangement is a general acknowledgement of everyone's contribution, as well as permanent remembrance and recognition of those who lost their lives and of the trauma that many people went through during the pandemic.
I thank the Taoiseach for the comprehensive reply. I welcome the fact this payment is being made. I reiterate that section 38 service providers, like Ability West, should have their front-line workers included. The Minister, Deputy Donnelly, said that this payment will be for everyone who was on site, involved, and had to be around patients. The Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, said that healthcare staff wearing gowns and masks, who were exposed in Covid-19 in clinical settings, should receive special recognition. Organisations such as Ability West fit all of these categories. It is a section 38 company, which provides a significant service right across the region of Galway and the west of Ireland. I plead with the Taoiseach to make sure that its front-line workers are included so that we do not have division.
I welcome the fact a public holiday has been created this year as a once-off, with a public holiday in commemoration thereafter. All of these things are noble and to be welcomed. We are making a bonus payment and we should make sure that we do not leave a sour taste in anybody's mouth when it is all over. Those who are entitled to it should receive it. In the spirit of being generous and everyone being in it together, that should be done.
I appreciate where the Deputy is coming from. Ability West does exceptional work. It is a broad-based organisation, covering a range of services, including day, respite, residential, outreach and multidisciplinary support services, for both children and adults with intellectual disabilities. That is acknowledged. The challenge facing Government is the difficulty in drawing clear demarcation lines for this. Fundamentally, it is about front-line healthcare workers, who were continually exposed, on multiple occasions, to multiple patients through engagements with them throughout the pandemic.
Early on, when we saw the programmes on RTÉ and elsewhere illustrating the impact of the pandemic on intensive care, there was a clear understanding of why that area in particular needed clear recognition, above and beyond others. It was because they were really in the firing line. There is a two-tiered response here. There is the recognition payment and then there is the general bank holiday, which is permanent and will apply to everybody else.
I raise an issue that arose just before Christmas. Two weeks ago, I tabled a question to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage relating to a family in Crumlin that was facing possible homelessness. The family, with two children, one of whom has autism, had been renting the same house for 18 years. The landlord wanted to sell the house and because of his relationship with the family, he approached Dublin City Council, DCC, to offer it the property for sale. He wanted to keep the family in their home. He was told that the council was not acquiring properties as before. Councillor Pat Dunne followed this up with the housing manager but was told that due to a directive issued by the Minister in December, DCC was prohibited from buying the property. In his reply to my question, the Minister said he was keen that local authorities and approved housing bodies, AHBs, avoid competing with potential private purchasers for available properties. Fortunately, I just heard today that DCC has exercised its discretion and has agreed to buy the property.
The reversal of the policy of encouraging local authorities and AHBs to buy housing stock instead of building directly would make sense if the State was building the level of public housing that is required but that is not happening. In the midst of a homelessness crisis, it is a blunt and crude measure which could have resulted in a family being made homeless as a direct consequence of a Government directive. Homelessness is on the rise and has increased by 14% since May 2021. There were 9,099 people in emergency accommodation in November, including 2,548 children. According to the Simon Community, only 11% of the rental properties that were available in December accepted the housing assistance payment, HAP, which equates to 148 out of a total of 1,350 properties across 16 areas, including major cities.
The concern of the Minister is that local authorities and AHBs buying up properties was partly responsible for squeezing people out of the market but the real issue is the role of institutional investors. Government policy is to encourage such investors. An update to Housing for All states that the Department is engaging with institutional investors to encourage sustainable investment in residential accommodation. Of the €12 billion needed to build 33,000 units per year, which is the target in Housing for All, a full €10 billion is expected to come from the private sector. This reliance on the private sector and the policy to effectively stop building public housing which dates from the 1980s are at the root of the housing and homelessness crisis.
The targets in Housing for All are not being met either by the private sector, the local authorities or the AHBs. In total, 20,400 houses were built in 2021, which is 12,000 below the target, as also happened in 2020 and 2019. That is a total of 36,000 houses below the target in three years. Between 2017 and 2020, the total of social housing stock only rose by less than 10,000. The Housing for All target is to build 9,000 social housing units per year but in the first three quarters of last year, just 3,144 units were built and two thirds of these were not new builds but were bought from private developers.
The situation is a mess and the people suffering the most are the aforementioned family in Crumlin and many other families who could be facing homelessness in the future. Will the Taoiseach and the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government change the directive issued to the local authorities and permit priority acquisitions in specific circumstances so that families and individuals do not face eviction into homelessness?
I thank Deputy Joan Collins for raising the issue and am glad that the particular family's situation has been resolved, with DCC now facilitating the purchase of the house. I think the Deputy said there were two children with special needs in the house.
Common sense and flexibility should always apply in situations like this. Councils have flexibility.
The target this year is for 12,000 social homes, of which 9,000 are to be direct build, between approved social housing bodies and local authorities. I can recall a year ago or longer that people were saying local authorities were not building enough social housing. I said it myself when I was in opposition. We want local authorities building houses as the core activity in housing provision along with approved social housing bodies. I am talking here in the context of social housing. We do not want acquisition to be the alternative to local authorities building their own homes and getting houses built. That is the point.
From a policy orientation point of view, the clear message to local authorities has to be that their route to social housing provision is primarily through construction, either by the local authority or the approved social housing body. In certain circumstances, there can be acquisitions. In the phasing out of the leasing situation, which has been ongoing for some time and helps in respect of homelessness and the immediate issues the Deputy just raised, there has to be flexibility when situations present themselves to councils in respect of particular families or sets of circumstances so that the councils can respond flexibly. That flexibility has to be there.
In addition, €4 billion of State funding will be provided for housing, both social affordable and cost rental, per annum for the duration of the plan. In addition to that, an estimated €10 billion is required for private house developments that will be needed. We need private sector investment in addition to the public investment to get to the 33,000 completions a year that we want.
The Deputy, in her presentation, omitted the reality of the pandemic and its impact on housebuilding. She said the targets were not met in 2020. That is obvious because of the prolonged lockdown that year. The same happened in 2021 when there was a prolonged lockdown, unfortunately, because of the Alpha variant. That went on for three to four months. That impacted on public sector housebuilding outputs and in terms of private sector housebuilding. Housebuilding made a good recovery in the latter half of the year. There were 31,000 commencements in 2021 and about 38,000 planning permissions were granted. The pipeline is getting much better. It is not a mess at all and we have clear visibility now in terms of the social housing pipeline and private housing.
The Land Development Agency, LDA, has been established on a statutory basis. It has a number of projects ready to go. It has also developed Project Tosaigh which works with developers on projects that had been lying dormant even though they had planning permission. The LDA is there to activate those to get houses built fast so that the people who need housing can get it.
For clarity, I made the point that 20,400 houses were built in 2021, which is 12,000 below the target. That also happened in 2020 and in 2019, which was before the pandemic.
My question relates to the directive. Dublin City Council obviously did not get clarity that it could intervene in these situations. I outlined to the Minister the situation with the family who were facing homelessness. He replied that he was keen that local authorities and approved housing bodies avoid competing with potential private purchase for available properties. He raised specific priority acquisitions of one-bedroom units to deliver for Housing First, etc. He concluded by saying that he understood that Dublin City Council had informed his Department that as the property did not fall under the priority categories for acquisitions, it was not in a position to acquire it at that time. If that is what Dublin City Council was reading from the directive, there is a great danger that situation is being replicated around the country. I am asking the Taoiseach to intervene and clarify the directive for the local authorities that specific purpose acquisitions should also be used when families and others are facing homelessness through evictions.
I have not seen the detail of the particular case but what the Deputy read was that the council told the Minister it did not feel it came within the priorities. There is an issue of why it did not feel that was the case. However, it clearly does now.
The councils are under huge pressure.
I can appreciate that. It is good for the family that it happened. Remember there was a debate here almost a year ago on acquisitions.
People in this House wanted ordinary people to be able to buy houses in estates without being outbid by the councils or institutions.
That is not the issue.
It is the rationale behind the general policy. We do not want individuals or couples competing with the council all the time to buy a house. That is the balance that has to be achieved here. The primary focus we want from local authorities is to concentrate on getting social houses built directly. We need more housebuilding on all fronts. This includes the private sector, agencies like the Land Development Agency, LDA, local authorities and approved social housing bodies. They all need finance in different guises to enable the financial capacity to be put behind what will be a massive housebuilding programme for the next ten years.
Will he talk to the Minister about that?
Yes. I will talk to him about what the Deputy has raised as well.