I move:
That Seanad Éireann condemns the Government for its continuous refusal to rectify the disgraceful situation whereby only certain areas have school attendance officers, leaving large areas of population without this essential service.
I know the Minister for Education and Science is aware of the reasons I speak vehemently about this issue. What was rural Dublin 20 years ago is no longer rural Dublin. Certain sections of the Minister's constituency are in the Dublin Corporation area, while large areas are controlled by county councils. The School Attendance Act, 1926, and the school attendance committees which were formed in 1892 observed the differ ence between urban and rural areas. That was fine for urban villages around the city of Dublin, such as Tallaght, Terenure, Clondalkin, Lucan, Swords and Howth, although I am not familiar with the Minister's end of the city. Those villages have grown enormously over the past 20 or 30 years, but they are outside the remit of Dublin Corporation. For that reason, there are no school attendance officers in those areas. I am aware that other county boroughs throughout the country and the old Dún Laoghaire Corporation area had and still have school attendance officers.
The 1926 Act spells out in black and white the obligation on children to attend school, on parents to send children to school and on the school attendance committees to provide for school attendance officers to ensure these obligations are carried out. I am sure the Minister knows that many children from the age of eight are falling through the net and being lost to society. In many cases they descend into a subculture of crime which leads to drugs and probably prison.
I do not understand why such a glaring problem has not been recognised. The gardaí in rural areas, which include the old villages around Dublin, are the school attendance agents. I cannot understand how anyone expects gardaí from stations in Blanchardstown, Clondalkin, Lucan and Tallaght to be school attendance officers. The strength of the Garda unit in Clondalkin has been reduced by almost one third since 1975, but crime has increased by more than one third. It is ludicrous to think that school attendance problems will be dealt with in a meaningful way.
Although we do not often see school attendance officers in the courts, at least there is a system in the city area which involves reporting back to the local authority. The Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Deputy Dempsey, is always asking us as local authority members to use our powers more. I do not understand why certain local authorities have the support of school attendance officers, while major local authorities, like my own, have only nominal support. There is a population of more than 250,000 in the South Dublin County Council area. However, it does not have one school attendance officer. I strongly suggest that someone should do a rain check on how many parents have been brought to court because their children are not attending school. It would be a lonely trawl through the records to find anyone who has been prosecuted recently.
We are resorting to taking children into care when their behaviour is at variance with society's norms. These children could easily be helped at an earlier stage if we had decent school attendance support. It is shameful. We all know that in many built up areas there are some single and married parents who, because of drug or alcohol addiction, do not have access to education and are not able, competent or willing to ensure their children attend school. We may as well condemn those children at seven years of age. It is not unusual to see a number of children playing in my area on any given school day. I guarantee that when they are 16, they will not be playing. They will still be together, but they will be up to no good. It seems wrong. The fine for non-attendance was 40 shillings in 1926, it is now £2. I do not know how many euros that will be.
It is negligent of us to do nothing. The Minister will probably tell me about the new agency, which I would welcome. However, it will probably not become operational until two years from now. It is possible Fianna Fáil will not be in Government. I am not saying that the objectives of the legislation should be ignored, but there may be different ways of achieving them. In the long run there will be more and more delays and we will be creating out-of-school schools for young delinquents.
I never want to return to the old days when the man from the school went around to homes on a bicycle and if the parents did not co-operate the child was sent into care, usually in what was euphemistically described as an industrial school. If we do not pull up our socks collectively and if we continue to ignore what is happening, we may have to provide some form of custodial schooling in order to save these young people from themselves and from the consequences of the lack of care they have received.
As the Minister is well aware, most politicians have sat on school boards and I currently do so. What do we do with the appallingly disruptive pupils who do not conform, even after 50 chances? They are sent out into the wilderness. If they had been identified sooner we might not have that problem. We should be providing another form of schooling for those who cannot make it through the formal system.
I plead for power to be returned to local authorities in both rural and urban areas. It is only a couple of years ago that there were cases of people on the same street living on either side of the city-county boundary and those on the county side did not get the fuel allowance on the basis that they had at their disposal the picking of branches and osiers. I have always thought "osiers" a wonderful word. We now have the ridiculous circumstance in which children in former villages which are now thriving towns are being deprived and that is a terrible social sin. The Minister's heart is in the right place, but that is no good unless an Act is put in place that will give control back to local authorities and allow them to employ school attendance officers with some hope of making a breakthrough.