Paul Murphy Demands Clarity on SNA Funding and School Repairs

Thanks a lot for coming before us. Just before I get into the capital expenditure, I want to follow up on some of the issues raised at the last meeting and in relation to the correspondence that we got back in response to our questions. Just to start on the issue of, obviously the backdrop to the last meeting we had was the controversy over the proposed cuts to 500 SNAs, the withdrawal of those cuts under pressure, and the question was asked about whether the 19 million, which was found to mean that those cuts would not take place, whether that was additional funding or not. Obviously if it isn't additional funding, well then to me it means cuts somewhere else in the Department of Education. The response we got in your letter is to say, as the Department stated at PAC on 24th February, it understands that this is additional funding, however it is aware that the PAC has written to the Department of, and deeper, to clarify this matter. Do you have any further information at this stage? Are you able to say, like you're saying, it understands that it is additional funding, do you know that this is additional funding at this stage or are you still in that grey area? So Deputy, thank you for the question and the opportunity to clarify this again. So my understanding is that as we said the last day, the provision of additional 19 million has been made, that's been agreed in principle, and so that has taken effect in that the decision has been made that no SNAs will be moved from those schools as had been planned. So that has been stopped, none of those SNAs will move. With regards to the confirmation of that funding and the technical provision of it into our vote, that has to go through financial procedure, that requires a memo to government and also Dáil approval, and that process hasn't taken place yet. I think the Deputy is aware that there's wider consideration being given to our vote at the moment and this is being looked at in that wider context, but we've had very, very, very constructive meetings and discussions on this and we're hoping that we will see big progress on that in the next couple of weeks, quite imminently. As you stated in your letter, we also wrote to Deeper to clarify this and their response also didn't clarify that, indeed it did the opposite. They didn't say yes, we're going to pay for it, yes this is going to be new money, instead they just said the process pertaining to this matter is still ongoing as the matter is under active consideration by the government. So can you say to me definitively now that there will be no cuts elsewhere in the Department of Education as a consequence of not cutting these 500 SNAs? So Deputy, I have to respect the financial procedures, that decisions on our finances have to go to Cabinet, they have to have a decision there and then it has to be approved by Dáil. But my understanding is that there will be no cuts, that funding has been agreed in principle and it will be provided and certainly the SNAs that were going to be moved to another school, that decision has absolutely been made that they will not be moved. Okay, I mean it's three months now almost since we had our engagement, it's a long time for that not to have moved on, but in any case. Secondly, just on the underlying issue in terms of the SNAs or certainly that's what the campaigners argued and I believe them was the issue of the circular and the relatively narrow approach of the existing circular in terms of primary care needs. I presume you're aware that the Save Our SNA campaigners, which includes parents, SNAs, educators working together, have come up with an alternative circular placing appropriate emphasis on, for example, emotional regulation and wellbeing. Is that something that the Department has considered in any sense yet? So Deputy, there's been huge engagement with thousands of SNAs, with teachers, with principals, with children themselves that have special educational needs, young adults now that have been through the system. A huge amount of work has been done on that workforce development plan, which again we're hoping to see published now in this quarter. So a huge amount of work done, FORCE is the official representative of SNAs, a huge amount of work done with them, they have an SNA that leads on many of the discussions. Just in the last couple of weeks our minister met, our ministers, both ministers, met with a number of SNAs representing the huge SNA workforce around the country. That workforce development plan I think will be hugely welcomed. It really sets out how much SNAs are valued, it talks about their role, it reinforces their really, really, really valuable role. It also recognises that the teacher has to remain the primary educator in the classroom, and that we best serve children when teachers are allowed to have that time to spend with children to meet their learning needs. And just to clarify, you have the alternative circular? I think officials may have seen it, we're certainly aware of it, Martina. Is there an active process of consideration of this alternative circular is the question? Thanks very much, Deputy. Yes, that alternative document would have been circulated, I think, to deputies and more broadly. I think it's really important to say, and the Secretary General has touched on it a little piece there, there's almost been, when we look at it, a thousand SNAs engaged on our webinar, 28 SNAs met with the ministers in March, FORCE as the leading union representing SNAs. There's been two years of work on the draft circular that we have proposed, and it deals with a lot of the issues that you've talked about there. It talks about care needs, but it also talks about emotional regulation, student wellbeing, dignity, transition, planning and review of support plans. So all that work has already been done in the work that we've done. I think what's really important about the work that we have done, and FORCE have done, the National Parents Council have done, the Children's Rights Alliance have done, it has the depth, it has the detail, and it has the extensive consultation with stakeholders over two years. So absolutely, the individuals can have a commentary on a document, all very valuable, but I think the work that has been done over two years with the numbers of people, the stakeholders, parents, Children's Rights Alliance, that document which will come out of it will have the depth and the clarity that people will need, and I think it will deal with the kinds of issues, Deputy, that you've focused on. Thank you. I think people can understand what you're saying there. Just finally, in terms of what arises from the correspondence, the issue of litigation. I was quite struck by the line. I mean, this is a situation whereby parents feel compelled to take legal action, particularly often in cases of children with additional needs, to force the state to provide them with appropriate education, school places. The letter responds to us as, most matters which are not resolved in advance of such correspondence being legal correspondence, correspondence threatening legal action, are resolved satisfactorily through this mechanism, with a proactive and collaborative approach to resolving the educational issues raised, particularly with the NCSE. It struck me as a bit of a contradiction in terms to say that an approach that is premised on families having to take legal action is proactive, if you get what I mean. And we've kind of established this norm, from the way it's written, whereby parents feel that they have to go down this route, which in turn then disadvantages parents who don't maybe have access to this. Obviously, there's many lawyers, I would say, that would do it for free, but people may not be aware of that. That it kind of benefits those who are willing to or have the capacity to go down a legal route. Can I say, Deputy, honestly, I say this really, really genuinely, no parent needs to go down that legal route. I respect their right to, they have an absolute right to, and when they do that, we respond to them. But genuinely, I would say, Deputy, we have put resources, we have demonstrated, there is a track record here, twice the number of special classes now than there were in 2020. We now have 31,000 specialist places. We've increased the number of special schools by 20, 20% overall increase in places. We've put an extra 50 special educational needs organisers into the NCSE to be available. Every parent who believes their child needs a specialist place, they need to make themselves known to the NCSE, to make themselves known to the CNO, we will provide them with an appropriate education, a special class. We've demonstrated the extra delivery of special classes and special school places. I accept that sometimes it isn't as quick as parents would like. I absolutely accept that and I hear their frustration. And sometimes, I know personally multiple parents who have done everything right and things only move when they take legal action or threaten to take legal action. That's kind of what your correspondence is saying. I think the correspondence shows, and I will ask my colleague and Deputy if you don't mind, but that correspondence shows that all those cases are addressed. We do not end up in court challenging any parent. We do get school places and that goes for all the children. After the legal letter arrives. But Deputy, we would be getting those places anyway and all those others, the hundreds, the thousands of other parents that are acting who haven't taken legal action, we have delivered school places for them and we can demonstrate. Okay. I just want to move on actually, if it's okay, to the capital element. I mean, one of the things you say in your opening statement is that this year there will be works done to about a thousand of the 4,000 schools in the state. And you could look at that as just, that's great, you're a quarter of the buildings, we're doing work on them. But is it not the case that what's happening there is that a lot of our school buildings are in pretty poor states of repair. You have a lot of leaking roofs out there. And instead of building new buildings, as is often actually necessary, there's kind of a patchwork approach of fitting things up. I'll give you the example of St. Aidan's in Talla, which I've been raising multiple times. There was an article in the Irish Times about it. I mean, they've literally spent millions on roof works over the years. And the school is just in a bad state. There's water continues to come through the roof. You can't open the windows. There's beads coming out of the walls. It's in a bad state. They would maintain that the building needs to go, they need to be replaced. But all this money is being spent to keep it, just to keep it alive, just putting plasters on it. Is that what explains the very high amount of like 25% of buildings are going to get work done in the next year? No, Deputy, I think if we look at that breakdown of the housing, a number of those are on new buildings, some are on summer works, Greg's site and climate summer works. The survey, you talked about what is the standard of the school estate? That survey that we are conducting and that will be completed by the end of the year is going to give us really, really strong comprehensive evidence about every school across the state. I do have to say, though, that we have a very generous NDP now, 7.55 billion over the next five years. But nonetheless, we do have to prioritize. We do have to make decisions. And I think if you talk to a lot of them, and I'm sure in your own constituency, you'll know that there are a lot of really high quality school buildings. There is, you know, many developed over the last 20 years. Hubert. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thanks. And thanks, Deputy, for your question. Yeah, I suppose that thousand figure of projects out of construction in 2026, that reflects the strong track record of delivery that we have in the department, and also the forward planning that we do to support that. That doesn't include emergency works type scenarios that you might be referring to. They're not included in that. So this is projects already at construction, large scale projects, large-scale projects being rolled out to construction as part of our NDP rollout. It's our summer works projects, and our SEND repurposing projects, which are very important from the earlier discussion there in terms of supporting SEND provision, supporting special classes. And they're just examples. And we also have our climate program. And you referenced St. Eden's, you know, they're part of our pipeline of projects as well that we're working through as well. Can I ask how long it normally takes to get from the point of it being recognized that a new school building is needed to the new school building being provided? So I was recently in another school, Sculled Men Ruins, in Oban, in Tallaght, and I think it was back in 2014 that an architect appointed by the Department of Education first said, okay, you need to have new buildings, we can't patch this up. I mean, they've had ceilings collapse in a classroom. Just recently, there was water in the storms coming through, where an interactive panel was, there was all this electrics and everything, you know, things that are not safe, there's water regularly going in. But they still, there was a whole series of various delays, kind of back and forth. Last July, the 2A went into the department, they still don't even have a formal response to that, which seems to be a long time, even forget about 2014, even from July of last year, what's the kind of timeframe we're talking about? So we give an indicative timeframe from all these stages, you're very familiar with them from zero right through the 2A, 2B, up to construction. So from the zero to four, when a school is out in onsite, ready for construction, the indicative timeframe we give is about five years. And you'll understand, Deputy, that there is a lot of planning there, there's a lot of design, we follow the public procedures and guidelines on public infrastructure, there's various stage gate controls there. So we have to protect external funding, ensure that we follow that governance. So that's the indicative timeframe. It can be less on occasion, and if there's complications and planning issues, it can take a little bit longer. And I suppose just to add, Deputy, new schools are not a large element of our overall capital programme. Our big emphasis is about supporting existing school buildings and improving those buildings, adding capacity of those buildings. And then where we have to do new schools, yes, we do them, and we cater for them where there's demographic needs, or more recently, in terms of special schools, a lot of new schools there. And wherever we can, we provide them on existing school sites as campus, and that's a particular strong aspect in terms of special schools. And you mentioned, for example, Squell Mail Run as an example, and new schools there, and the department is due to meet with those schools later this month. Let me just get one final question in before my time is up. In relation to the PPPs, it seems to me we're spending an extraordinary amount of money on these public private partnerships. So in total, if my readings are correct, we're due to spend a total of £1.8 billion on what will be 30 schools. I could be off by one or two, you tell me if I'm wrong. That works out, I think if my maths are correct, about £60 million a school. Obviously that's not just building, it's also...