I want to thank you and your office for giving me the opportunity to raise this matter in the House, as I believe it is of vital and pressing importance that it be debated and that the Minister consider reversing the decision that has been made in this regard.
What we are discussing is the reduction, indeed the scrapping of the fledgling scheme for adult literacy. In the midst of a plethora of unbelievably harsh and unjust custs, particularly in the health and education budgets, it is hard to single out one more short-sighted and unfair than the cut in the funding to the adult literacy scheme. As a former teacher, the Minister must know the extent of the disadvantage suffered by adults with literacy problems. She must also accept the valuable service being provided in restoring to people the opportunities missed in childhood through no fault of their own. She must also know that a large proportion of the service is provided on a voluntary basis, making this cut even more unkind. The Minister cannot be blinded by figures to such a degree that she cannot see that £100,000 is a miserable financial saving relative to the damage that will be caused to this most vulnerable and disadvantaged group in our society.
The scheme we are talking about is a structured pilot type programme, a three year programme with a very modest £1 million budget for that period. It 1985 £150,000 was provided. The amount in 1986 was £350,000 and this year, £500,000, the last instalment of the £1 million. For the Minister to say, as she has said publicly, that there was an increase in this year's allocation is not true. This was not a single year programme. It was a three year programme and the agreed amount for this year was £500,000. I want to stress to the House that this amount is intended to cater for 400,000 people in our society in need of literacy services. I do not invent that figure, I take it from a discussion document published in June of 1986 by the Department of Education on adult literacy. If we divide the 400,000 by what should be provided this year, we would have just over £1 per person needing this service. In fact, the Minister has reduced it to £1. That is most regrettable. I regard it as a breach of the agreement made with people in need of this service and with those who organised it.
This area is very often referred to as second chance education. I do not regard it in that light. For these people it is not second chance, it is first chance because the system of education that we had was not suitable and did not do for them what it was intended to do and, consequently, they left school unable to read or write. We have such a large number of people in our society in that category that those numbers are in themselves an indictment of our educational system. The people we are talking about are the most vulnerable in our society, the most disadvantaged. It was a soft option to pennypinch and take £100,000 directly away from the scheme. We had very firm promises in the recent election campaign from Fianna Fáil that in the context of certain saving measures that were necessary the weak would not suffer. Nobody will suffer from this measure except the weakest and the most disadvantaged in our society.
The present pilot scheme has reached about 1 per cent of the total number of people who are in need of this service to enable them to read and write. The cuts now taking place will have the effect of stopping that increase, stopping the uptake by the people who need the service. They will now have to be turned away, to be told by the VECs and tutors in the local areas that they cannot be taken on, that the money has not been provided. It will take a great deal of courage for people who are illiterate in the first place to take that step and go to a class, to admit that they are unable to read and write and that they want a chance to do so. If they are turned away, I firmly believe they will not come back. It is quite a delicate matter for them to take their courage in their hands and seek help. We are now saying that there is no help. The help has been cut off by the Minister for Education who has removed the funding and these people will be left to flounder helplessly, without assistance.
I should like to pay tribute to the teachers and organisers of this scheme. I am aware, from my own area in Kildare, that they are paid on a very reduced basis for the hours they put in. Where they put in 10 hours, they are paid for two. They agreed to this. They should be congratulated for providing what is largely a voluntary sevice. In the context of the national budget, we needed only pennies to keep that service going. The goodness of those involved in the scheme is being rejected. They are being told that the pennies for the materials, the chalk, the circulars and the other very modest items that are required will no longer be available. This attack on the scheme itself will have the effect of its being scrapped. It will reduce it to a level where it cannot operate.
There was a second attack directly on the National Adult Literacy Association. They were set up in 1980, I understand, and their purpose was to support, to advise, to train, to co-ordinate and form a network through the VECs for adult education and adult literacy. Their budget has been reduced this year from £41,500 — a very modest budget for a national organisation expected to look after 400,000 people — to £28,000. It is quite impossible for them to do what they were set up to do. Their workers, one full time and two part time, may now get their wages, but no materials will be available for them to do their work. This is a great shame and I hope that the Minister who is, I believe, a compassionate person, will reconsider and at least allow the national co-ordinating body to remain at the strength at which they were before.
There is a third prong in the attack which will affect directly the disadvantaged group of people the scheme was intended to help. This is the especially high reduction, when we look at the reductions in education generally, in the allocation for the VECs. The effect of this will be that the personal development programmes and other adult education programmes that have been available through VECs will no longer be possible. If we look at these three together, we can see very clearly that the Minister has taken a decision that this is an area where there will not be protests, marches or letters — these people cannot write. This is a soft option and one she could get away with quite easily. I regret that very sincerely and hope that the decision can be reversed.
Education is a basic right for all our citizens. People who are put through an educational system which fails them — through no fault of their own but because of high numbers and inadequate teaching methods for their needs — have a basic right to go back to school so that they can learn the basics of reading, writing and communication. I am not talking about a fringe activity; there are four hundred thousand people involved. I call on the Minister to restore that funding. I support the campaign of the National Adult Literacy Agency on the issue.
