Thank you. We are pleased to be here. We thank the committee for the invitation to meet it to discuss our campaign to have tax legislation amended in order that tuition fees for children attending Dyslexia Association of Ireland workshops can be made tax deductible. The campaign was undertaken because of the inadequate State funding of the services of the Dyslexia Association of Ireland which had resulted in hardship for many families. That is the background to the campaign.
The Dyslexia Association of Ireland is a voluntary organisation with 31 branches nationwide. One of the key services our branches offer is specialist outside-of-school workshop classes for children diagnosed with dyslexia. These classes offer targeted specialist tuition in small groups and a balanced programme to develop children's learning, covering phonics, basic reading, reading fluency, reading comprehension strategies, spelling, writing skills, oral language development, computer skills, study and memory strategies. The pupil-teacher ratio is as low as 4:1 or 5:1, which is necessary because of the specialist input the children require.
On average, tuition workshops cost approximately €900 per year. The fees are necessary to pay for rent of premises, materials and the hourly rate due to teachers who provide the specialist tuition. All workshops are fully tax compliant. We estimate that in 2007 Revenue earned more than €200,000 in tax and PRSI from our workshops which are not competing with the learning supports offered by the school system; they are supplementary. They are not an optional extra that parents choose as a luxury, but a necessity for the children concerned. They provide targeted, specialist support for children who have been assessed as needing this support. Many of them are not getting enough help in school, which is the reason they attend a Dyslexia Association of Ireland workshop. I extend an invitation to members of the committee to visit a workshop to see the valuable work being done and meet teachers, parents and children to see exactly how they work.
The supports available in schools are not meeting the specialised needs of pupils with dyslexia, despite their best efforts. The school service provides learning support targeted at the most severely affected children. At second level, resource teaching is only available to children at the second percentile or lower, the bottom 2% in terms of their literacy ability for their age group. Children at primary level have no entitlement to resource teaching, which is one to one, as opposed to learning support. The allocation of learning support hours is up to each school; schools are allocated hours which they then decide how to distribute best among their pupils. The Department of Education and Science learning support guidelines advise concentrating on children whose literacy skills would be at the 12th percentile or under, but in practice children at that level may not receive learning support because there is such a demand for the service.
In a Dyslexia Association of Ireland survey earlier this year almost 50% of parents reported difficulty in receiving any learning support in school. Many children miss out on it in school because their needs are not being identified or perceived as being sufficiently severe to warrant the provision of support. Assessment in school is not based on stringent group tests; many children are not undergoing the psycho-educational assessment they need which would provide a comprehensive assessment of their actual learning needs and recommendations for the support needed to remediate them. The right to a fair assessment of needs is enshrined in the Disability Bill, but we do not see it happening in a timely fashion.
The assessments made in school such as the Micra-T and Drumcondra tests only look at basic literacy and numeracy levels. They do not assess reading fluency, comprehension, memory and free writing ability. As a result, the true nature and degree of many children's difficulties are not being identified. School tests only measure children against their peers, not their own potential or ability. It is possible and often happens that a child could be hugely under-performing relative to his or her ability and potential, yet it does not show up because of the tests used in schools.
Generally, the support on offer in school is not specific to dyslexia. Even children whose difficulties are deemed severe enough to obtain support are often dealt with in a general learning support class, in which they are in a mixed group with children of wide ranging difficulties; support is not targeted at individual need. Teachers in learning support posts do not always have the necessary expertise in dyslexia to address it. The service offered by Dyslexia Association of Ireland workshops is specialised and targeted, making it highly cost effective. Recent research done by a PhD student at Trinity College Dublin which compared the supports on offer in the school system with Dyslexia Association of Ireland workshops found that our workshop system was the most targeted and specialised and offered the most balanced and thorough programme of intervention for children with dyslexia. The services workshops provide are meeting the shortfall in the school system, with which we are not competing. What the workshops offer is the kind of programme recommended in the 2005 report, Succeeding in Reading, commissioned for the Department of Education and Science and compiled by the Educational Research Centre, Drumcondra, which stated, "Children at risk of reading difficulties should receive a greater amount of reading instruction through a combination of increased English lesson time in school and participation in targeted outside-of-school support programmes", which is where our service comes in.
Ideally, we would prefer if the Dyslexia Association of Ireland was given adequate funding towards the running costs of these specialist workshops. We would then be able to offer subsidised fees on a sliding scale which we could target at the families most in need. We rely on our own limited fund-raising efforts to enable us to support some families, but we are not able to support all those who need assistance. Some services have been discontinued because of financial difficulties. Due to the reluctance of the Department of Education and Science to provide comprehensive funding or give any commitment to provide ongoing funding, we campaigned for an amendment to section 469 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 to have workshop fees included as allowable expenses on the MED 1 form. Parents in the tax system would be able to obtain some relief on the fees payable and the Dyslexia Association of Ireland could concentrate on assisting families at the low end of the income scale and those not even in the tax system.
Ideally if the Dyslexia Association of Ireland had sufficient funds, it could subsidise families and target the most financially disadvantaged. It gets an annual grant from the Department of Education and Science of €63,500 which goes towards its information service and national office, and what is left over goes towards providing assessments subsidising fees for children from disadvantaged families. This funding has never been increased since it was first obtained in 2001. There is no guarantee that the Dyslexia Association of Ireland will get money year on year. Despite several submissions we have not heard whether it is to get any money this year. Unfortunately this is what usually happens. We are very limited in terms of planning because of that. From our 2007 allocation, only €3,500 was available to subsidise fees for children in workshops.
Through fund-raising initiatives in which we have been involved in the past couple of years we have raised some income which we have used to subsidise fees. Last year we used more than €30,000 from fund-raising to subsidise fees and another €30,000 was raised locally by our network of local branches around the country of which there are more than 30. Much of the money we raised recently was from a fund-raising initiative, the Hasbro National Game Playing Week Fund. Unfortunately that fund is now exhausted. That is why in 2007 and again this year we have applied to the Department of Education and Science for approximately €70,000 in additional funding each year to make up the shortfall and enable the Dyslexia Association of Ireland to continue to support financially disadvantaged families.
An example of the difficulties caused by lack of funding is that a very popular and successful summer school for students with dyslexia has had to be discontinued because parents cannot afford to pay the fees. Parents would have had to pay the full economic cost because the Dyslexia Association of Ireland, owing to its financial situation, is not in a position to subsidise the fees in any way and, unlike the summer colleges in the Gaeltacht areas, no subsidy was forthcoming from the Department of Education and Science. We estimate that the cost of allowing tax relief on workshop fees to parents is not likely to exceed €200,000 in a year. Coincidentally, that is the amount we estimate Revenue gains in terms of tax and PRSI from our workshops.
In the context of tax relief, the implementation of the MED 1 system appears to discriminate against children with dyslexia. As matters stand, if someone has a speech and language assessment and requires speech and language therapy, both are allowed on the MED 1 form. If someone has medical tests and requires medical treatment both are allowed. In the case of dyslexia, the psycho-educational assessment which diagnoses the difficulty is allowed but there is no allowance or relief for any follow-up treatment recommended following the assessment. How can this be justified? It makes no sense.
Irish language summer colleges are heavily subsidised, to the tune of €1.228 million in 2006. Irish is taught in every school already, and all other learning is not dependent on a good level of Irish, whereas, if a child with dyslexia is struggling with English, this will impact on his or her ability to learn across the whole curriculum.
The Government gives generous tax relief on fees to private third level colleges, on some foreign language and IT courses. It also gives generous tax relief on pensions. However, there is no real financial assistance given to families struggling to cover the additional costs associated with getting necessary help for a child with a diagnosed specific learning disability such as dyslexia. One parent commented in our recent survey that even bin charges are tax deductible, yet there is no relief for fees to Dyslexia Association of Ireland specialist classes.
In their pre-budget submissions in recent years, the Disability Federation of Ireland and many other disability organisations have called on the Government to introduce a cost of disability payment to help address the additional expenses incurred which are above and beyond those experienced by people without a disability. This is backed up by research done by the National Disability Authority. Parents of children with dyslexia face a great deal of extra expense, and many have to make huge sacrifices to secure the extra tuition their children need. They do not undertake these expenses lightly, and some even resort to taking out loans to get the necessary help for their children.
I want to give members an example of one of the families we have helped recently and quote an extract from one of their letters. It states:
Myself and X are finding it very hard to pay for the workshop for the past few years. X is on Disability pension and is very sick. She has Multiple Sclerosis and Ulcerative Colitis. I have no overtime at work. I would be very grateful if you could help us out.
That application, which was evidenced by their local community welfare officer, showed that the family had an income of €530 for four people, one of whom was seriously ill. The family would not lightly send their daughter for extra tuition and incur that extra expense if it was not essential but they recognise the benefit this girl was getting from attending the workshop. We were glad to help them out and offer them some subsidy for the fees.
All disability and equality legislation is underpinned by the concept of fairness, something that comes up regularly in the disability field. The concept of fairness does not mean treating everyone the same, and this is where people sometimes get it wrong. People believe everyone must be treated identically to be doing the best for them but fairness means treating everyone individually and giving everyone what they need. Fairness is essential also for good governance.
In terms of bringing that argument for fairness in this area, to us it would seem unfair. Relief is allowed for fees for courses which will enrich a child's cultural experience, for example, with Irish or for courses that advance career prospects at third level but no relief is given on courses that provide a vital educational benefit to these children and without adequate literacy, educational progress is extremely difficult and sometimes impossible. It appears the relief system as it currently stands is very unfair in terms of where the reliefs are targeted.
Our request today is that this committee would support our requests for, first, realistic, secure and multi-annual funding to ensure the Dyslexia Association of Ireland can develop a rational three year plan. If we have a commitment to funding, that enables us to plan our services much better. Second, we request an amendment to section 469 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 to allow Dyslexia Association of Ireland workshop fees to be tax deductible.
The Dyslexia Association of Ireland believes a combination of both additional funding and tax relief may be the best approach. Amending section 469 of the Taxes Consolidation Act allowing for tax relief on workshop fees will assist those families that fall within the tax net. Additional secure funding to the association will enable us to continue to subsidise those families who are financially disadvantaged, and particularly those who will not fall into the tax net. That will allow us target those most at need.
Any resources spent on this type of early and timely targeted intervention for children with dyslexia will be well spent. That will be backed up by cost benefit analysis done by the National Economic and Social Forum in 2006, which suggested that every €1 invested in targeted early education initiatives would yield a return of €7, both in terms of having a more educated and productive workforce but also in terms of the costs saved on unemployment benefit and adult literacy costs, let alone the costs of incarceration if, unfortunately, people fall in that direction.
To give members an example, the Dyslexia Association of Ireland currently runs a career paths course, which we run in conjunction with FÁS, and it is for unemployed adults with dyslexia. It is a full-time six months course for these adults designed to train them and get them either back into the workforce or on to specialist career training. Conservatively, we would estimate that the cost per participant per year on one of those courses is approximately €25,000. If that is contrasted with the cost of €900 a year to give a child that early intervention of help in a workshop, the argument is clear.
We hope the committee will support our campaign for additional funding and tax relief on fees and we thank the members for giving us this opportunity to discuss the issue with them today.
