I thank you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, for allowing me to raise this important issue on the Adjournment.
This debate is opportune, given that tomorrow the Minister for Health and Children will launch a report on the needs of teenagers in Dublin's north-east inner city which was commissioned by the Lourdes Youth and Community Services and which, regrettably, paints a gloomy picture of many of our young people in this part of the inner city. Some of the findings of the report are as follows: 88% of the sample group left school before completing the leaving certificate; 52% left without a junior certificate; 60% were suspended from school at some time; 63% were in low paid low skill jobs or were on training courses and 26% were not in any employment or training. I will not go into the findings of the report on crime and drugs which have already been well documented.
The scandal and tragedy about this report is that it is but one in a long series of reports drawing attention to the desperate social disadvantage of this community and specifically to the unacceptable inequality of opportunity in education affecting young people in this part of Dublin. My understanding is that several studies over the years have shown that this inner city community has the least number of children of any area of Dublin or the entire country who get the chance to go on to third level education. Well below 5% of the young people go to university while across the Liffey in Dublin 4 the norm is that at least 55% go to third level institutions. That is a stark example of inequality.
There are Dublin Corporation flat complexes in this area which have not seen one child get through to third level education. Some of these flats have the highest level of early school leaving in the State. It is important to state that a small number of young people, some of whom I know, have, despite all the obstacles presented to them by a neglectful State and a socially destructive environment, achieved the impossible against all odds and obtained third level degrees. However, they are few and far between.
Ironically, this area, which suffers such appalling educational disadvantage, is where the Department of Education and Science and the Minister's office are located. Yet, incredibly, that Department has not attempted to formulate a policy response to tackle the area's dreadful social injustice. Is it any wonder that a recent internal report in the Department by Mr. Seán Cromien states that the Department has "little local presence" and that there is a "vagueness about where in the Department policy is formulated and whose responsibility it is to formulate it, if any policy exists"? There is no policy in relation to this area of Dublin.
While there are a range of schemes intended to address educational disadvantage throughout the State, the strongly held view of all the community interests in the north inner city is that the only way to formulate a comprehensive policy with the objective of achieving equality of opportunity in education is to establish a task force on educational disadvantage specifically in this area of the north inner city. Everything else has clearly failed, as evidenced by the Lourdes Youth and Community Services current report to which I referred. ICON, the Inner City Organisations Network, recently made a detailed submission to the Minister urgently requesting the setting up of such a task force. The experience of the drug problem in the same area demonstrated that it was only when a similar task force strategy was initiated that any progress was made.
This scandal of inequality of educational opportunity is far bigger than any scandal around which tribunals have been established, particularly at a time when there is such affluence and enormous budgetary surpluses which provide the opportunity to do something meaningful to address this injustice. There are an increasing number of job opportunities in the centre of Dublin, particularly with the expansion of the International Financial Services Centre and the ongoing renewal of the docklands. However, the bulk of the better jobs are beyond the reach of most of the local young people because we have failed to provide them with the education to which they are entitled as a constitutional right.
I have raised this issue on many occasions in this House over the past 18 years with several Ministers for Education without result and the injustice continues. I urge the Minister, if he reads my comments tonight as he is not present, to give a commitment to take the necessary action and establish a task force without further delay. I presume I have the support of the Taoiseach in this matter as he also represents this community.
