Joan Burton
Question:5. Deputy Joan Burton asked the Taoiseach when Cabinet committee B, social policy and public services, last met. [37672/18]
View answerTuesday, 23 October 2018
Questions (5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
Michael Moynihan
Question:6. Deputy Michael Moynihan asked the Taoiseach when Cabinet committee B, social policy and public services, last met. [38529/18]
View answer
Brendan Howlin
Question:7. Deputy Brendan Howlin asked the Taoiseach when Cabinet committee B, social policy and public services, last met. [41076/18]
View answer
Bernard Durkan
Question:8. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Taoiseach when Cabinet committee B, social policy and public services, last met. [41816/18]
View answer
Richard Boyd Barrett
Question:9. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach when Cabinet committee B, social policy and public services, last met. [42044/18]
View answerOral answers (16 contributions)
I propose to take Questions Nos. 5 to 9, inclusive, together.
Cabinet sub-committee B last met on 22 October. The sub-committee covers the areas of social policy and public service reform, including education, children, social inclusion, Irish, arts and culture, and continued improvements and reform of the public service.
The Cabinet committee system aims to ensure a co-ordinated approach to the delivery of the relevant commitments in the programme for partnership Government, and provides the opportunity to shape proposals on issues such as equality and disability, which require input from multiple Departments.
The aim of Government is to ensure that the polices and services approved and advanced by Cabinet sub-committee B bring about sustainable improvements in people's lives, particularly those most vulnerable, and introduce supports and opportunities to help those on the margins of society fulfil their potential and lead full and engaged lives.
Through policy interventions at Cabinet committee level, Government has introduced a number of sustainable reforms aimed at improving the lives and standard of living of those most in need. These include: affordable childcare; ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with a Disability; advancing a number of important gender equality measures; and the development of an in-school speech and language therapy service, a pilot of which is now under way.
The Taoiseach referred to speech and language therapy. I was not going to make this point but there is a chronic crisis in speech and language therapy and the availability of such services for young children, even to get diagnosed and so on.
On social policy and public services, does the Taoiseach accept that a huge percentage, I would go as far as to say 10% to 15%, of society does not engage with services and that there are disadvantaged communities right across the State, not only in the large urban centres but also in rural areas, which have not contributed to, or engaged in, their communities for generations and that they have become more and more isolated as the generations have passed? Would the Taoiseach accept that this is one of the major challenges facing society? In the past 50 years, free education has delivered enormously for society. The next major challenge is around how to bring people who are at the periphery of society, and those who are most disadvantaged, back into society. It is through education that it will happen but there is no sense of a coherent strategy at Government level in the Departments of Health, Justice and Equality and Education and Skills to see if we can tackle the social isolation felt and experienced by young people and older people from various strands of society. Perhaps I will come back to that in a subsequent question.
I put it to the Taoiseach that our public services are in bits. We all know about the public housing crisis, and we are aware of the dire situation in our public health service, but one crisis that is less remarked on but which is very severe is the crisis in third level education. That crisis was not in any way addressed or acknowledged in the Government's recent budget. The Taoiseach may have noted that the Irish Universities Association released a statement recently expressing significant regret at the failure of the Government to address the funding crisis for third level education. The Union of Students in Ireland and other student union bodies have also expressed huge disappointment at the Taoiseach's failure to address the funding crisis for third level education and for student poverty. Does the Taoiseach acknowledge that we have a crisis and that Ireland is at the bottom of the league table in Europe for funding per student? The Irish Universities Association has helpfully included a graph with its statement, which compares Ireland with other European countries. It shows the State investment per student in the following countries: Finland €20,000 per student; Germany €10,000 per student; The Netherlands €14,000 per student; Norway €16,000 per student; Sweden €19,000 per student; and Ireland €5,000 per student. Ireland's €5,000 funding per student is a tiny fraction of what is invested in third level education cross Europe. This per student investment is going to further decline, because according to the Minister's budget speech we are expecting another 18,000 people to enter further education and university over the next number of years. The budget, however, gave the sector a 1% increase in funding. It was €19 million extra, which is nothing. It is a drop in the ocean that will be mopped up many times over by the increased student numbers. Does the Taoiseach acknowledge that there is a problem here? Has the Taoiseach any intention of doing something about this funding crisis in third level education?
As the Taoiseach is aware, schools that have been built by Western Building Systems are now under investigation by the Department of Education and Skills. The Taoiseach spoke earlier about public services. Reference was also made to how woefully inadequate they are, but inadequate as they are, people cannot access the service if they do not have a school building to go to. Students in schools in my constituency, and in the Taoiseach's constituency, and their parents are worried and, naturally, very anxious. Significant structural issues have been found. They relate to fire safety concerns, especially in Ardgillan community college. I understand that the part of the school that was built by Western Building Systems is now closed and the students are not in school this week. The students are off school next week for mid-term but the school wants to know if there are any plans for those students. Where will they go and where will they be accommodated? There is already serious pressure on school accommodation in north County Dublin.
I take some of the points made by Deputy Moynihan in his contribution. I am not sure that I fully understood the question. If the Deputy wants to come back with a supplementary question I would be happy to try to answer it again, once I understand the question.
With regard to Deputy Boyd Barrett's comments, I acknowledge the shortcomings, challenges and failures that exist in our public services in Ireland. On listening to Deputy Barrett again and again, one would think that we lived in the worst country in the world and that Ireland was some sort of wasteland, and that it was an awful place to live and be a citizen. Yet, this is a country that the UN human development index ranks fourth in the world. That is not a measure of GDP. It is not a measure of the size of our economy. This index takes into account health, education, life expectancy and the quality of our public services. The UN human development index ranks Ireland as fourth in the world, which is up from tenth or eleventh place not that long ago. If a small UN committee made a criticism of Ireland, Deputy Boyd Barrett would be the first on his feet to tell us how awful we are, but when the UN Development Programme, with its well respected human development index, ranks us fourth in the world, the Deputy does not want to acknowledge that. Ireland is rising, for example, when it comes to the social progress index, and it has been for a number of years. The Deputy does not want to acknowledge that. When we consider the Central Statistics Office statistics, the survey of income and living conditions shows that poverty and deprivation is falling in Ireland, that income inequality is narrowing, and that inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient is narrowing. Again, the Deputy does not want to acknowledge any of that. The Deputy also does not want to acknowledge the fact that employment levels in Ireland are at their highest. It seems to me that there is very much a double standard here. The Deputy wants to come in, use every example of anything that is wrong in the country but he never acknowledges the progress that we are making in the country, and he never acknowledges the fact that when taken in the round Ireland is a good country, it is a good place to live and we offer our citizens a lot of opportunities. Yes, we can do better, but if one wants to do better one starts by acknowledging what is going well and then try to fix the things that are wrong. One does not just rubbish everything and everyone and everything they do. That is a defeatist and nihilistic attitude and it will not bring about any positive change for any citizens in our country.
The Taoiseach has not answered my question.
On higher education specifically, the budget provides for an increase of between €50 million and €60 million next year. This is funded by an increase of 0.1% in employers' PRSI.
That comes on top of a similar increase last year. We have also identified a super surplus of approximately €300 million in the national training fund. That money will also be available to our higher education institutions. Project Ireland 2040 includes a pretty major investment in our higher education institutions including our universities and institutes of technology. One only has to travel around the country and visit our colleges and institutes of technology to see how many new buildings have been built in recent years and we are going to see a lot more. The year 2019 will be the third year in a row in which we see a significant increase in funding for our third level institutions.
We always have to bear in mind that it is not just about a simple calculation of how much money is spent. If we divide the total amount of money we spent on health in Ireland by the number of patients we are one of the highest spending countries in the world, but spending does not necessarily result in outcomes. The same thing applies in education. It is a very simplistic and facile analysis to just take the budget and divide it by the number of students or the number of patients.
It is the universities' analysis.
What actually matters is the outcomes and delivery for patients and students. If it was just about spending more money our problems would be very easy to solve. Of course it is about much more than that.
Picking up on Deputy O'Reilly's question on the schools, of course what is paramount for us is the safety of students and staff. It is going to be necessary to inspect approximately 40 schools that were built by this particular company. We anticipate that work will be done this week, over the Hallowe'en break. We anticipate it being completed by the middle of November. In some cases works are going to be needed. Those works will be done. In some cases it may be necessary to partially or entirely vacate some schools, in others it may be possible to introduce temporary measures and to do the works over the summer. We will pursue the builder in the courts. In fact, that is already under way in respect of some of the fire safety issues. It certainly appears that corners were cut back in the Celtic tiger period when it came to the building of some of these schools. That is truly disgraceful. We are in a very different position now. For the last couple of years a clerk of works was present on site every day when a school was being built in order to make sure that it was built up to standard. It certainly appears that prior to 2014 or 2015, and particularly during the Celtic tiger period, schools were built without proper oversight. We now have to go back, make sure they are safe, fix them, and pursue the people responsible.
There are two points to my question. One relates to social policy. The Taoiseach speaks about everything that is right in this country. I preface my remarks by saying that one of the greatest social changes was free second level education. It has now empowered almost three generations of people. It has certainly worked enormously well but I believe that as many as 18%, or at least 10% to 15%, of people in our society are severely disadvantaged in where they are living because of family backgrounds and so forth. They suffer from social problems, drug addiction and everything else. They are living all over the country; they are dispersed and are not only located in the large urban centres. The major challenge as we go forward as a society will be developing a coherent social policy that will empower these people. People 50 years ago used the education services to improve their lot. These people are not engaging with the education services, with the health services or with society as a whole in terms of community activity or anything else. The major social policy question is what is the Government's thinking? Has it come up with any special Cabinet committees to look at what social policies should be developed? It is not an easy question but it is a challenge for society as we go forward.
There is nothing facile about my analysis of the funding of third level education. This analysis was provided by the Irish Universities Association. Its authors are academics so I think the Taoiseach should take them a bit more seriously rather than just trying to score political points. The analysis points out that we are spending a small fraction of what most other European countries are spending per student. The Taoiseach's comparison with health is facile because it fails to acknowledge that quite a considerable amount of that expenditure is out of pocket expenditure by people paying accident and emergency charges, overnight bed charges, and prescription charges. That is all included in the expenditure as is, for that matter, private health insurance. Public funding of health is a very different matter but we are talking about universities. The point is we are way down the league table and our universities are now tumbling in the international rankings. The Irish Universities Association, to say nothing of the students' unions, says that there is a very serious problem. I would have thought that the Taoiseach should acknowledge that as an issue and seek to respond to it in a sensible way.
The Taoiseach mentioned that legal proceedings are under way in four out of 40 of the cases. Are there plans to initiate legal proceedings in respect of the remainder? With regard to the contingency arrangements, reference was made earlier to the question of spin versus substance. There will have to be a roll-out of information for the parents concerned. There is probably no need to hire an orchestra or someone to make a video about it, but it would be an idea if parents could get timely information. My understanding is that staff in Ardgillan community college moved very quickly to inform parents but they still do not know what the plans are for the next number of weeks. There will have to be some sort of information roll-out. Perhaps the Taoiseach might comment on that.
I thank the Deputy. I see that she has a Topical Issue matter on this later so I am sure the Minister for Education and Skills will be dealing with it in detail.
On Western Building Systems, there is legal action under way in respect of four schools where works related to fire safety have been or are being carried out by the Department. That number includes Ardgillan community college. We will have to see how this issue develops with regard to structural problems in the schools but if the company has not built these schools up to standard it is absolutely the intention of Government and the Department of Education and Skills to pursue that company for damages in the courts. I agree with the Deputy in respect of information. It is very important that parents are afforded with information and that we give them information as soon as we possibly can. The priority is, of course, the safety of students and staff. The second priority is to carry out the inspections of the 40 schools and to get that done as soon as we possibly can in order to find out what kind of works need to be done, to get them done, and to pursue the builder for the costs through the courts.
In terms of Deputy Boyd Barrett's further contribution, I did not think there was a further question but I did answer his original question in my previous contribution when I said that funding for higher education is being increased. It was increased last year and it will be increased next year as well. It is important we make sure that the money is spent as well as possible. We should judge ourselves on outcomes, not on how much we spend. That applies across all areas of the public service.
On social policy, I think I understand the question but I do not have the answer. If the Deputy has specific examples-----
Does the Taoiseach accept the challenges that are there?
I certainly do. The Deputy referred to people who are not accessing education, healthcare, or employment and social protection services. I am trying to think through exactly to whom the Deputy is referring.