Education Costs: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members]

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That Dáil Éireann:

notes that:

— primary and post primary education in this State is intended to be "free" under the Constitution and in legislation, but the reality is profoundly different;

— the cost-of-living crisis continues to put parents and students under significant financial pressure;

— according to the most recent Irish League of Credit Unions "back to school costs" survey, the funding of back to school continues to be a challenge for parents, with 66 per cent saying that covering the cost of back to school is a financial burden; and

— school books remain one of the most expensive items for parents of secondary school children, with an average associated cost per pupil of approximately €210 per year;

further notes with concern the Government's intention to increase Third-level student fees this coming September;

agrees that the cost should not be a barrier to accessing further and higher education, and student fees should be phased out completely; and

calls on the Government to:

— cancel the planned increase to student contributions charges and instead reduce fees further in order to work towards the elimination of student contribution charges; and

— expand the Free Schoolbook Grant Scheme to secondary schools in Budget 2024.

- Deputy Sorca Clarke

Deputy Michael Healy-Rae

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this important motion on the costs of education. I looked in my book before coming down here and as recently as today I had seven dealings with parents who have had difficulties with the high cost of education. This could be the cost of the courses their children are on or the cost of living in respect of the student rental accommodation and the difficulties they have in accessing funding in this regard. I told those people about this motion. They were very grateful that it was coming before the Dáil. I thank Sinn Féin for its work and dedication on this important matter.

We welcome and fully support this motion. As the cost of living in Ireland continues to rise, students find themselves at the mercy of financial strain. Despite a slight drop in inflation, families are still struggling to meet their household expenses, leaving students vulnerable and forgotten in the midst of this affordability crisis. We are witnessing high education costs having an alarming impact on students and their families, which emphasises that the measures taken in budget 2023 fall short of providing substantial relief. It is important to note that while the Government may boast about falling inflation rates and take credit for this development, it is essential to understand what these numbers truly mean for the average person.

Let us consider a hypothetical scenario where inflation decreases from 8% to 6%. On the surface, this might seem like a positive development. In reality, though, this indicates that the cost of living is still increasing, albeit at a slightly slower pace. Inflation represents the general rise in prices over time, which means that even with a lower rate of increase goods and services are becoming more expensive. To put this simply, when inflation persists, it means that the purchasing power of our money is diminishing. While the Government, therefore, might present falling inflation as a victory, it does not change the fact that people are still facing higher expenses for their everyday needs, making it difficult to keep up with the rising cost of living.

Anecdotal evidence from students and parents in various constituencies, including mine, highlights a shared concern that these mounting costs may hinder academic success. Students from the lower socio-economic backgrounds are particularly susceptible to the escalating prices of food, transportation, rent and energy. Their financial limitations can significantly impede their ability to excel academically and fulfil their potential. None of us wants to see a situation where young people cannot get the most out of themselves education wise because of a lack of funding or resources. We do not want that to happen.

The Irish League of Credit Unions, ILCU, which I thank and compliment for its excellent work always, in its most recent annual survey revealed important data about the back-to-school costs faced by Irish parents of children attending primary and post-primary levels and the impact of rising living costs on their budgets. While the survey does not provide specific details on the cost of education, it highlights the financial burden faced by parents in preparing their children for school. The findings include the fact that two-thirds of Irish parents, 66%, consider the cost of back-to-school items a financial burden. Parents spend an average of €1,518 per child attending secondary school and €1,195 per child attending primary school. Back-to-school costs are causing 29% of parents into debt, with an average debt of €339. Some 10% of parents are considering using illegal moneylenders to cover these expenses. The one thing we would all plead is that under no circumstances should parents be forced to use the services of illegal moneylenders, who are actually nothing better than highway robbers, to be honest. Credit card usage for purchasing back-to-school items has increased by 6% to 23%.

Deputy Danny Healy-Rae

I am glad to get the opportunity to speak on this motion and I thank Sinn Féin for bringing it forward in the Chamber tonight. Every one of us elected here recognises that we must assist people in every way to ensure that our children can access education. Whether this is in primary school, secondary school or at third level, we must ensure it is available and accessible to all children. There is no question in this regard about every boy and girl who got up this morning and went to school. Some are finished now for the holidays and we wish them all the very best for their bit of a break. Many of them are working to assist their parents to provide the funding to ensure they can go to school in the fall of the year in September.

I have also had people ringing me about accessing the Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, grant. It is a constant worry and bother to those parents, whether they have one, two or three children. The costs mount as the numbers increase. It is very difficult for some of these parents to meet the bills they must pay. Additionally, accommodation costs in Limerick and Cork are exorbitant. Can we imagine that students from Kerry were driving up and down to Cork and Limerick during the last fall of the year when they could not get accommodation at all or could not pay for it? This is not acceptable and we must ensure this does not happen in future.

Last year, about this time, the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, announced that every child would have free transport to national schools. Yet we knew the preparations had not been made for that to happen. The school bus transport in Tralee, in our county, was not ready for this or preparations had not been made in this regard. We all know how hard it is to get drivers and contractors and to ensure that they have buses up to standard. It was very unfair and not thought out very well. It was laid out that every child going to national school would have free transport, but in reality that is not what happened.

It is a struggle to ensure that those travelling beyond two miles have school transport. It is hard to organise this and to get it going, but I believe that all those who are beyond two miles are entitled to this free school transport on a bus. I say this because in a place like Kilgarvan four national schools have already closed. A commitment was given by the Department of Education at that time that all those children from those areas where the schools had been closed would be transported to the central school, which is Kilgarvan Central School. Sadly, though, it is a struggle to ensure that those children get this transport all the time and that this service is maintained. It may lapse for a time. No children might be coming from the Gortaloughane area in Kilgarvan, for example.

All of a sudden a family arrives and transport needs to start again. There is a reluctance to ensure that families are accommodated.

That is why I worry about Governments that make statements that children will always be transported because the next Government that comes into office seems to forget that. As long as we are elected here to represent the people, we will keep reminding the Government that those commitments were given in every parish. As well as Kilgarvan, they were given in Gneeveguilla where Tureencahill closed. Other schools were closed. If the Government does not do that, it is neglecting rural Ireland. People cannot live in those areas if they do not have a car.

Deputy Joan Collins

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing this Private Members' motion to the floor. I welcome the opportunity to speak on it.

Last week, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul released its minimum essential standard of living, MESL, 2023 report. Over the past 12 months, the cost of being able to live with dignity has gone up by 10%, climbing by 13% for those who live in a city. The cost of basic items has gone up by nearly 20% in the past three years. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul predicts a 6.3% increase in this year and into 2024. We are in the middle of a massive cost-of-living crisis and it is getting worse. Much of any savings or emergency funds people have are spent. The Government has done little to combat this. It has given once-off payments, but fundamentally money must be put into services and pensions and basic pay must increase.

The hunger in the classroom study from February found 79% of teachers said they had hungry children in their classrooms every week. Of those, 40% said this happened every day and 73% said the problem was getting worse. The effect of the cost-of-living crisis on education is not just about the cost of schoolbooks and uniforms; it is about seeing our children going to school hungry because their families cannot afford food, cold because they cannot afford heating and in emergency accommodation because they cannot afford homes. Children cannot learn properly if they are hungry because they cannot concentrate. The cost of providing a decent education is not just about what happens in school; it is about fighting poverty, building homes and making sure children have a decent standard of living.

The cost of living is 12.5% more expensive compared with a year ago. The cost of a sliced pan has increased by 18%. The cost of butter has increased by 40%. Rents are up by 8%. Half of Irish tenants spend more than 30% of their pay on rent. Mortgage interest payments have increased by a whopping 44%. I spoke to a man in my constituency yesterday. His mortgage, which is with a vulture fund, was €846 a month but has increased to €1,464. That is before the interest rate hikes announced last week kick in, and we are expecting more down the road. Electricity is still 35% more expensive and the cost of gas has increased by 47%.

Wages, benefits and pensions increased by only 4% in the last year. The standard of living is being cut. It is estimated that 29% of Irish households are now living in energy poverty, the highest number ever recorded. Poverty rates for pensioners doubled between 2020 and 2022. Homelessness is at a record high after the eviction ban was lifted. Those are some of the realities people are facing.

One cost went down noticeably in the MESL report. The report states education costs went down by 6%, primarily due to the free primary schoolbooks scheme. This is welcome. I reiterate what other Deputies have said, namely, that secondary schoolbooks should also be free.

It does not matter if the cost of everything else goes up, but it shows the importance of these schemes. We need more of them for school meals, school uniforms and travel costs. We are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis and if the Government will not intervene to help people who are struggling, it could at least intervene to make sure that children are properly fed and educated through all of this.

This country made good strides in education over the past few decades. There was a period when access to third level education was increasingly available to ordinary people. That began to end when Fine Gael and the Labour Party doubled student fees after the recession. That access declined further with the housing crisis. The current cost-of-living crisis might be the final nail in the coffin.

If people cannot afford to heat their homes or buy food, they cannot afford to send their kids to college. People cannot afford to rent in Dublin and other cities. They cannot find somewhere to rent. The housing and cost-of-living crises prevent a lot of working-class kids and families from entering and progressing to third level education. That will only get worse. We need real interventions to make sure everyone has an equal opportunity to get a good education no matter where they come from or how much money they have. Free third level education is important and should be on the Government's agenda in the next budget.

This does not just affect children and students; it also affects teachers. The crisis in housing and the cost of living are having a massive effect on the living standards of teachers, lecturers and PhD students. There is an increasing shortage of teachers across our education system. We know why his is happening. It is the same for nurses and healthcare workers. People cannot afford to live or rent in the cities or the country. Teaching unions are now pushing for pay increases in line with the cost-of-living increases. PhD students are organising so that they are paid properly for their work, and I support them.

Our education system cannot function if no one can afford to work in it. There are huge problems across our education system, but the immediate one is to make sure every child can get a decent education during this cost-of-living crisis. That means providing more support to families in homelessness or at risk of property. It means paying teachers properly. It means making sure that primary, secondary and third level education is free. We need free schoolbooks and uniforms and the extension of the free school meals programme not just to DEIS schools but to every school so that no child goes to school hungry. We need to pay educators properly so that we retain them and they can do their jobs properly. We need to scrap all charges and increase student grants so that everyone, no matter who they are or where they come from, have access to the same education as everybody else.

Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs (Deputy Sean Fleming)

On behalf of the Government, I welcome the opportunity to respond to what has been a very insightful and informative debate on the important issue of the cost of education. The Government is acutely aware that many Irish families feel additional financial pressure each year when they are preparing to send their children back to school or college. It is important that the Government continues to support families with the cost of education.

As my Government colleagues said, it is crucially important that all children and young people are supported to access education to its fullest forms. The education system must value every child and young person and support and nurture them to reach their full potential.

My colleague, the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, highlighted the importance of the groundbreaking free schoolbooks scheme for primary and special schools which will be in place from the start of the new school year. Over €52 million in Government funding to support the implementation of the scheme has issued to schools already. All children and young people in our primary and special schools will now arrive into school on 1 September having the required schoolbooks, workbooks and copy books. The scheme has removed the requirement for families to purchase these items or make a financial contribution to a school towards the book rental scheme.

The DEIS programme, first introduced in 2005, is the main policy initiative of the Government to address educational disadvantage at school level. In March 2022, an expansion of the DEIS programme was announced which provided for the inclusion of 322 additional schools in the programme from September 2022. This means the DEIS programme now supports 240,000 students in over 1,200 schools, 967 which are primary schools and 235 of which are post primary. The Department of Education will spend in the region of €180 million in 2023 to provide supports to DEIS schools. These schools receive an additional grant each year to support the implementation of their DEIS action plan for improvement.

The school meals programme administered by the Department of Social Protection is vital, particularly in DEIS schools. The programme currently provides funding towards the provision of food services for some 1,600 schools and organisations and benefits 260,000 children. It enables the provision of regular, nutritious food to children and young people to support them in taking full advantage of the education provided to them. It greatly assists many families by eliminating the financial pressures they may face to provide a breakfast or a lunch each day and it is very important that when children come to school, they have a good nutritious meal to help them with their education during the course of the day. The Government provided €94.4 million for this programme in budget 2023. In addition, the Government recently approved an additional €14.5 million to allow access to the hot school meals scheme for all remaining DEIS schools and special schools from September 2023, benefiting more than 60,000 children and young people. As part of the significant plans to extend the hot school meals scheme to all children in the coming years, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, intends commencing the roll-out to all remaining primary schools on a phased basis commencing in 2024. This has been raised by a number of Deputies and I am sure they will acknowledge that this is breaking ground. There is a tremendous plan in place to achieve this.

The Minister referenced significant additional capitation payments of approximately €90 million that were issued to schools at the end of 2022. Capitation payments to schools are important in order that the schools have the necessary funding in place to cover the day-to-day running costs, such as electricity and heat. Within the available funding envelope, the Government will seek to further increase the capitation rates paid to schools in future years. Transport costs to and from school are an important issue for many families, especially those living in rural areas who may have to make travel arrangements and travel significant distances in the course of the school week. For the coming school year, the Government has decided the annual charge for a primary school child will be €50 and for a post-primary student will be €75, with a maximum cap per family of €125. This is a substantial reduction on the previous annual charges and shows again the Government's commitment to reducing the cost of accessing education for families. Eligible children holding valid medical cards and children with special educational needs remain exempt from the school transport charges.

It is also important to mention the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance provided by the Government through the Department of Social Protection. The back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance provides a once-off payment to eligible families towards the cost of school clothing and footwear. The rates of payment for the academic year 2023-2024 have been increased by €100 per child to €260 for children aged four to 11, and €385 for children aged 12 years and over who are in post-primary education. The majority of payments will be made automatically with no application form required. The back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance will be paid automatically to more than 120,000 families in respect of approximately 210,000 children during the week beginning on 10 July. Last week, I was very pleased as a Deputy in Laois to meet so many parents throughout County Laois and in Portlaoise who came up to me on the street and said they were very grateful to have already directly received the funding without even having to apply for it because the system worked on a renewal basis from last year. That funding was received by thousands of families in recent days and I will say to people who have not yet received it or applied for it, especially for new students, that the closing date for applications is 30 September 2023 and they should apply as soon as possible if they have not done so.

At third level, the Minister, Deputy Harris, has taken a number of steps to reduce the cost of third level education. Budget 2023 saw a significant reduction in the cost of college for third level students and their families and this included supports for the cost of living such as the reduction by €1,000 in the student contribution for free fees for eligible undergraduate students for the academic year 2023-2024. In addition, all student maintenance grant recipients received an extra payment in December last year. Moreover, students in receipt of the postgraduate fee contribution received a once-off payment of €1,000, increasing their support from €3,500 to €4,500. In addition, more than €20 million has been provided to the student assistance fund for the 2022-2023 academic year and a once-off payment of €500 was provided in 2022 for PhD students who receive Irish Research Council, IRC, or Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, awards. Moreover, €30 million was provided in funding to increase capacity for apprenticeships in 2023 and additional funding for social inclusion measures in apprenticeships such as bursaries for apprentices from underrepresented groups. In addition, approximately 48,000 students benefited from grant increases of between 10% and 14% effective from January 2023.

A further range of improvements to the student grant, as announced in budget 2023, will take effect for the coming academic year 2023-2024 and this includes the creation of a new student support contribution grant of €500 for incomes of between €62,000 and €100,000 in the SUSI grant scheme. The issue of the grant scheme was mentioned by a lot of people in the debate and it is good that families who were finding it difficult to meet those costs will be able to have some support, especially where more than one member of the family is at third level. The income threshold for the 50% student contribution grant has been increased from €55,240 to €62,000. Again this will facilitate many families, rather than have their family members being unable to go forward to third level education. There was a €500 increase in the stipend baseline for 2023 for PhD students who receive an IRC or SFI award and a change in the eligibility criteria for second-chance mature students, as defined in the student grant scheme, that reduced the period for a full break in studies from five to three years, which was a very significant issue as well. Increasing the deduction allowable for student earnings outside term time from €4,500 to €6,552 is very important. Most of us, as Deputies, have run into that issue where students who were earning money felt they were being penalised for working to get to college and then their grant was being reduced. That is a significant increase, allowing them to earn an extra amount of more than €2,000 without their grant being affected. Exclusion from the rental income of up to €14,000 being declared to the Revenue Commissioners under the Government's rent-a-room relief scheme is also important. There is a greater degree of flexibility for students who may have long-term social welfare payments but who are falling outside the special rate. On 25 May, the Minister, Deputy Harris was delighted to open the first stakeholder event to inform development of the Department's options paper. In general, this is the first Government, and I do not think there is another Government in the world, where out of 14 Government Ministers plus the Taoiseach, that two of the Ministries, which is one in seven of the Government Ministers, are solely and totally dedicated to education. To have two Government Ministers solely dedicated to education is a sign of the commitment the Government has to the education of our young people for decades to come.

Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire

I commend Deputy Clarke and Deputy Mairéad Farrell on bringing this motion forward. The summer months are meant to be a positive time for parents. They are meant to be a time to spend with their family and children and where good memories are made. Unfortunately, for a lot of parents the summer months are a very stressful and worrying time because they are looking to September and are looking at the lists of uniforms, workbooks and so on coming in, as well as at lists of textbooks at secondary school and fees at third level. At this time, there are parents right now who are trying to figure out first how they will get through the summer and second, pay these bills. Unfortunately, many will end up going to moneylenders, including illegal moneylenders who have extortionate interest rates, and will put themselves under very severe pressure. We know from the Irish League of Credit Unions that 66% of people say that covering the cost of going back to school is a severe financial burden. For organisations such as the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, it is one of their busiest times of the year and they get enormous numbers of phone calls seeking things that are essential, because every parent wants to ensure his or her child has the ability to access a decent education.

We are supposed to have a system where primary and post-primary education is free. The reality is that is a myth. It is not free; it is anything but. I acknowledge the steps forward that have been taken regarding free schoolbooks at primary level but I will also note that is something that was campaigned for by this side of the House and by organisations such as the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and the Irish League of Credit Unions for years, if not decades. We are three quarters of a century behind the North when it comes to free schoolbooks and while it is welcome, it certainly has been a long time in coming and we need to see it at post-primary level.

However, there are other significant costs on which we have not made any progress. The issue of uniforms is significant and will probably require different forms of legislation. I have tabled such legislation but the Government has not worked with me. The same is true with voluntary contributions. Not only did the Government not support the legislation on voluntary contributions, it voted to delay and delay again our Bill to tackle voluntary contributions. This is a huge cost for families so if the Government is serious, it needs to start supporting legislation the Opposition brings forward to cut costs.

Deputy Louise O'Reilly

I commend Deputies Mairéad Farrell and Clarke on this motion. We are all aware of the link between poverty and low educational attainment. It is the job of the Government to even out that playing field. Barriers like the high cost of schoolbooks and the cost of uniforms cause hardship and affect a student's ability to learn and a teacher's ability to teach.

St. Catherine's National School, Rush, does not have DEIS status. The only secondary school in the town has DEIS status but the two feeder primary schools do not. This makes no sense. A member of the school community contacted me. She said there are children in the school who are hungry every day, some do not have uniforms and if they do, they are in very poor condition as they have been passed down from siblings, relatives or friends. She said one child came in with his trousers stapled together last week before a staff member got to the shop and got him a new pair. She said the children are at a massive educational disadvantage before they even walk in the door to try to learn and asked how children can learn if they are hungry or the uniforms they are wearing do not fit or are not clean, so their friends will not sit beside them because they are smelly. She said she could go on to list all the school tours they will never go on, the museums they will never get to see because they cannot afford the bus and the popcorn parties they are not getting as treats because she spends so much on bringing in lunches to some children daily that she cannot afford to subsidise treats and trips as well. She said their childhoods are slipping away quickly. Just down the road, Gaelscoil Ros Eo is losing a teacher, which means that class sizes will increase as classes are amalgamated. This is not right in a growing town and I ask the Minister of State to engage with his colleague to examine this serious issue.

It is very welcome that the Government is not opposing our motion but we need to see more action to level the playing field for children. I ask the Government to support our motion. It should not just say that it will not oppose it. It should support the motion and take on board the constructive suggestions that Sinn Féin has made that will make a real difference in the lives of children who have been at a disadvantage since the day they were born. Education is the one thing that changes that. My grandmother always said it is no burden to carry and told me to get as much education as I could but we need to acknowledge that it is not easy for families. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, we need to pull every lever and ensure that every bit of support goes to families.

Deputy Sorca Clarke

I echo what Deputy O'Reilly said about the need to actually support this motion. Education is the last great equaliser of society. While it is no load to bear, the opportunities it presents, particularly to those who were born into disadvantage, cannot be overestimated.

I will briefly touch on some comments made by the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science earlier. I am not sure what he thought he was doing. Perhaps he was playing to the audience of those he hopes will vote for him in the next Fine Gael leader's election but considering how long Fine Gael has been in power, if he thinks that parents and students believe a word that comes out of his mouth about how it has the solutions to this issue, he is very wrong.

I spoke earlier about this needing to be a first step. This needs to be the first step. The post-primary schoolbooks scheme needs to be a first step. We then need to tackle capitation grant levels. The Minister of State mentioned them in his contribution. They are nowhere near the pre-economic crash level, never mind being increased due to increasing costs since then. While pupil:teacher ratios have come down, we are still a country mile away from where some of our European neighbours are and those we should seek to replicate.

Regarding the summer works scheme, I was in a school recently where the footpath was so crumbled, it is now literally a slip and trip hazard for the students and teachers in that school. Where is that programme at? Where is the ICT grant programme at? The Government has introduced a digital strategy but it is failing to actually resource schools to be able to deliver a request the Department is making of them. It is the same with the assistant principal 1 and assistant principal 2 posts. The Department has these asks of schools but it is failing to resource the management capabilities within the schools for the schools to be able to deliver them.

Do not get me started on books for the visually impaired. It is a thundering disgrace that any child should have to wait that length of time to get a book simply because it is in braille. If this was in any other circumstance, I can guarantee that somebody would have taken a legal action against the State.

We also need to drastically improve the level of intervention therapy services within our schools, particularly speech and language therapies. There is a reason they are so effective at a particular age and get more difficult as the child grows older. We need to have an honest conversation about the reasonable accommodation scheme for students with disabilities or students who may need additional supports. I will give the Minister an example of one comment a principal made to me quite recently. It involved the frozen fish fingers that come in a box. Two siblings in that principal's school came to the attention of one of the teachers. Something was a little off in the classroom. One sibling had one frozen fish finger in their lunch box while the other sibling had the other frozen fish finger in their lunch box.

While the Government talks about school meals and expanding the school meals programme, it needs to look at it as a whole, because while the Government is expanding it, it is not increasing the funding to schools to allow them to cope with the increased electricity costs where that food is produced on site or to manage the additional waste that comes from providing school meals. The Government talks about the primary school book grant, which is very welcome, but I am not the only parent who has received an email from a school saying that it does not go far enough. In fact, there were reports saying that it should be around €110 per year to be effective.

I listened with some level of interest when the Minister spoke about the school transport system last year being a success. I think there is a level of amnesia here. The school transport system last year was anything but a success. The only thing in school transport last year that somebody should be commenting on was the fact that it was an absolute disaster and how he or she will never stand over such a disaster happening again. The only thing that equals the unmet demand in school transport is the unpublished review that should have been out by now because students are going to be reliant on this, come September.

Another issue I wish to raise is that of teachers contributing to schools on a voluntary basis. Teachers giving freely of their time is not a never-ending resource. Teachers will not work for nothing forever. At this point, schools will have to start asking whether they have the capacity to deliver what the Department is asking them to deliver without that additional finance being available. Deputy Ó Laoghaire made a very good comment earlier. Sinn Féin introduced the Education (Voluntary Contributions) Bill but the Government kicked it down the road. We introduced a Bill on affordable school uniforms but the Government failed to support that. There is a considerable amount of work to be done when it comes to adequately funding education. Do not be so blind to good ideas simply because they do not come from that side of the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Dáil Éireann debate - Tuesday, 20 Jun 2023