Alan Kelly
Question:5. Deputy Alan Kelly asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet Committee on social affairs and equality is next due to meet; and when it last met. [38078/20]
View answerTuesday, 1 December 2020
Questions (5, 6, 7)
Mary Lou McDonald
Question:6. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet Committee on social affairs and equality will next meet. [38622/20]
View answer
Richard Boyd Barrett
Question:7. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet Committee on social affairs and equality is due to meet next. [40167/20]
View answerOral answers (7 contributions)
I propose to take Questions Nos. 5 to 7, inclusive, together.
The Cabinet committee on social affairs and equality was established in July 2020 and oversees implementation of programme for Government commitments in the areas of social policy, equality and public services, including matters relating to justice, policing reform and community safety. It receives detailed reports on identified policy areas and considers the implementation of commitments and reforms. In addition to the meetings of the full Cabinet and of Cabinet committees, I meet with Ministers on an individual basis to focus on particular issues. The Cabinet committee on social affairs and equality has met twice, on 2 November and, yesterday, 30 November.
I have a few questions on the reopening of the country, which begins today. To show the public that we are not always fighting in here, I acknowledge that the Government took on board a suggestion from me last week regarding health workers who were in contact with me about covering the Christmas period. It was that those without children or with grown-up children would cover the Christmas period for people with young children and that they would have the New Year period off. The Government did listen to me and moved the date out by a few days to 6 January to allow such workers to visit loved ones and family members outside their county. I appreciate that.
I wish to raise dance classes for young people in particular. Individual or small group dance classes could have been dealt with more favourably because it is such an issue around the country. Many people do not just do sport. As we all know, young people have gone through a horrendous time. It is the younger group and the older group in society who have suffered the most around Covid. There are so many young people around the country who go to dance classes. I urge that we would consider allowing children to do even one-on-one individual classes in big halls. We need to do anything we can to give them a chance.
The Taoiseach might also just explain to publicans – I hate the term "wet pubs" – why the limit of 15 persons outside is gone.
Regarding what happens from 6 January on, is it the Government's plan to assess that a week in advance or how long in advance will it be? People will need enough guidance. Is it the Government's plan to proceed from here with having restrictions on county travel and on household visits again? I hope we can stick with what we have otherwise.
I met this morning with Sophie Redmond. She is 11 years old. She wrote me a letter and I want to put it on the record of the Dáil. I know she has written to the Taoiseach as well. Here is what she had to say.
Dear Mary Lou,
Thank you for supporting me. My name is Sophie Redmond and I am 11 years old. I love watching your videos on Instagram. [So that is good.] I like how you help people and that is what I want to do when I am older.
You know I need scoliosis surgery. My friend, Chris Andrews, has been helping me look for this.
Please Mary Lou can you ask the Taoiseach if he can help scoliosis children like me and change waiting lists for good. When I have my surgery, I hope we can meet up and do my TikTok dances.
Happy Christmas
Love and Hi 5’s
Sophie Redmond
Age 11 Loughlinstown
Sophie got her diagnosis in 2017. She was put on a waiting list for surgery to correct the curvature in her spine last March, but her doctor has warned that she might not get a date for surgery until late next year. She also needs urgent surgery on both her knees, as they can easily dislocate. The delay in Sophie's surgery means that the double curve on her spine is twisting into her lungs and pelvis. She used to play Gaelic football and she loves hip-hop but she had to give it all up because of her condition. She is an incredible young girl and her family are wonderful as well. They are sick with worry and concern. This is an issue that has been raised, not just on the Taoiseach's watch but on the watch of previous Governments. I implore him to provide us with a roadmap so that Sophie and other children and young people awaiting this surgery can have some hope and relief and some prospect of early surgery.
One of the key areas that it is necessary to address if one is to really try and strive towards equality is education. I wish to continue to put to the Taoiseach certain points I was making earlier, but just to focus them a little bit more. Fees are increasingly becoming a major barrier to equality of access to education. That is bad, not just for the people who have financial impediments put in front of them in terms of accessing higher education, but also for society because we are not going to get the talented, qualified professionals in key areas that we need if we continue to make life very difficult for them financially because of fees. I referred earlier to the graduate entry medical students, where people, in particular from less well-off backgrounds, have the potential to access medical training and to become doctors. What they tell me is that they are paying €15,000 in fees a year, so that by the end of their training, along with their living costs, they qualify with a debt in excess of €100,000. By the way, they can only get a loan from one bank, namely, Bank of Ireland. The rest of the banks will not even lend them the money to do it. That is crazy when we need doctors but, equally, the student nurses and midwives that we have talked about quite a few times, as well as not getting paid for working during their placements, also have to pay for the privilege of being exploited by paying €3,000 in fees or €7,000 if they previously did a degree. This is madness from the point of view of equality of access to key areas of education where we need qualified people.
First, I will respond to Deputy Kelly's questions about the reopening. Dance classes are a very difficult area. The issue is where one draws the line. Individual tuition is allowed in terms of culture, arts and music, but where does one draw the line with dance classes?
We need clarity.
There are so many different types of dance. One is also drawing children from different communities and backgrounds to the one centre, so one is potentially facilitating the spread of the virus. As I stated in my address on Friday, we are prepared to go so far but no further.
Unfortunately, quite a number of groups were left out in the modifications to level 3. The objective was to try to limit the spread of the virus and that was our motivation.
There is a limit of 15 people meeting outdoors, which is to prevent congregation. We have already seen with the takeaway phenomenon that unacceptable practices were building up in the cities, to be frank, and this was becoming a scene in itself. We were seeing significant outdoor congregation, which is not good if we are looking to stop the spread of the virus. The policing of it is difficult if there are three pubs in a row on a street, for example, with potentially three blocks of 15 people. It would be very difficult for gardaí to police it. Gardaí have said to us that level 3 is more difficult to police than level 5 as there are more grey areas than at the higher level, which leads to a challenge. I am not blaming the Garda for any of this and it is a decision we took but it is an important insight. When we open up, we allow more activities, creating a more difficult scenario all around, whereas level 5, because of its crude and blunt nature, can be much clearer.
On 6 January, we will assess the position, and we will assess it on an ongoing basis with respect to numbers of cases, hospitalisations, people in ICU beds and so on, which will tell us where the virus is at. As I said before, level 5 was different from the first lockdown in that we kept schools, the construction sector and non-healthcare services open. Any new restrictions that may emerge in the new year could be different as well. It does not mean all sectors will fall victim, to use the term, of a new set of restrictions.
Deputy McDonald raised her correspondence with Sophie Redmond. I pay tribute to Sophie Redmond and her courage. It is very difficult not to have a clear timeline for an urgent operation. I will certainly inquire of the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, to see what we can do in Sophie's case. Covid-19 has made an impact on the capacity of our children's hospitals to do surgery. On top of that are the delays that had been improving, although they had not met four-month targets. I will engage with the hospitals to see what can be done to accelerate the surgery. Every effort must be made to facilitate children like Sophie, who need their surgery, to get it when they need it.
With scoliosis it is a matter of skilled personnel being available and the right people doing the surgery. It is an important consideration. There are other complications arising from a requirement for knee surgery. I will certainly check that out for Sophie if the Deputy sends the details to me. We will certainly do everything we possibly can to help her and her family.
Deputy Boyd Barrett spoke about education and fees in general. I take his point on postgraduate courses but that specific route was created some years back, over a decade ago, and at the time it was considered radical in itself to create new entry routes into medicine. It had been fairly difficult to access but this route has an additional cost element. I will ask the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science to review the matter but one of the biggest matters overall with third level is access to finance. The Cassells report has been published and we have frozen fee levels at the current undergraduate level for quite some time. Postgraduate fees have gone up a little too much and we gave additional supports in the budget for postgraduates, particularly those facilitated with grants and so on.
It may be better to deal with the area by giving greater supports to students via income thresholds as those who need it most should get greater supports going through college. This is in preference to, for example, an abolition of fee structures. I would prefer to support the colleges in the first instance and try to give additional core funding to colleges, as they need it to provide quality education. We should give further supports for inclusion in third level education, especially around people with disabilities and who are disadvantaged. We provided additional funding in the budget this year for both those categories. We should also provide funding in the broader SUSI grant structure for students for whom education is too much of a financial burden.
That said, participation rates in Irish third level education are probably the highest in Europe, particularly over the past 20 years from the late 1990s onwards. I was involved in that process as a Minister with responsibility for education. We dramatically expanded third level education and created far more places. We now need to continue to resource it as it is key to economic development in the country. I will ask the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science to examine the medical graduate entry programme.
Sitting suspended at 4.25 p.m. and resumed at 4.45 p.m.