Senator John McGahon- speech from 21 Sep 2022

Thank you very much, Lasky Herlock. Acting Leader, over the last number of weeks, a lot of people in this house would have had representations and spoken with INTO ahead of the upcoming budget. I did that pretty consistently with people in my own hometown of Dandauk, but I met one teacher who hit home with two particular points for me, that was Mirren O'Keefe, who's a teacher in Ravenshale in North Louth, and the two points that Mirren really made to me that hit home was one, the pupil-teacher ratio in this country, and number two was the real lack of availability for mental health supports for students. In terms of the teacher-pupil ratio, when we look at it, the European average is in and around 20. At the minute in this country today, we have a lot of kids who could be 28, 29, 30 pupils per teacher. Naturally enough, that makes it very difficult for the teacher and difficult for the students to get the quality of learning that they can get within a 40 to 45 minute class. If we can reduce that pupil-teacher ratio down to the optimum European average of 20, that would be really, really incredible. But I know it's easy to get up here and say we should do this, we should do that. It is substantial money as well, and the INTO are looking for about 20 million for that teacher-pupil ratio too, but just because it may be difficult to do something, there's no reason not to have a lack of ambition towards it. And I think that is definitely where we should aim to aim and try and get the teacher-pupil ratio down as low as possible in this country and as close to European averages. So that is something that I hope the Minister could look at for the budget next week. The second issue is in relation to mental health supports. And so many teachers are having to fill a gap in terms of mental health supports in primary schools and secondary schools. A lot of them aren't even qualified to do so. I feel the same way in my own role as a politician in my office at home. The amount of people come in to me and I'm an unqualified social worker. So I feel for teachers in the same type of way. And one of the key things that the INTO and teachers are saying is that if they had the opportunity for a 20-year-old grant per pupil, that would cost around 11 million on the upcoming budget and that would allow for on-site counselling. This is what teachers in my home county of Dundalk and County Louds have been saying to me, and in particular Mayor O'Keefe, who had a really detailed conversation with, and I'd like to see some action on it in the upcoming budget next week. Thank you very much.