Labour Party calls for €100 million fund to support schoolchildren during pandemic

The Labour Party has called for an €100 million fund for additional tutoring and supports for children to “catch up” on schooling missed during the pandemic.

The party’s spokespeople on children and on education, Ivana Bacik and Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, told reporters at Leinster House this morning that the extra help was vital to repair the damage done to children’s education due to the closure of schools.

“The damage being done to children is profound,” Mr Ó Ríordáin said, pointing especially to the difficulties being experienced by children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and the long-term nature of the damage.

“We have to undo the damage that is being done,” he said.

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He said a fund of €100 million would be “a start” and could help through individual tuition for schoolchildren and could also be used to reduce class sizes.

Mr Ó Ríordáin also warned of a “lost generation” of teenagers who will not return to school.

“For some families it is a difficult time, but for others it is a time they won’t recover from,” he said.

Mr Ó Ríordáin said it was “understandable” that some teachers were reluctant to return to school “but the damage to children is profound”. However, he stressed that the return to school could only be achieved with the agreement of the teaching unions.

“Everything has to be done by agreement...and then a final decision can be made. But it appears we are moving in the right direction,” he said

Mr Ó Ríordáin denied Labour was “pandering” to the teachers unions. “Let’s remember who the enemy is. The enemy is the virus,” he said

He also said the Labour Party was in favour of a system of calculated grades for the Leaving Cert, rather than running the examinations in June.

Meanwhile, Solidarity-People Before Profit has said it is “too soon” for the Taoiseach to plan for the reopening of schools and construction.

“The Taoiseach can’t predict what the level of infections on a daily basis will be at Easter,” TD Bríd Smith told reporters at Leinster House this morning.

She said for schools and construction to reopen, daily infections needed to “way down to around 10-20 a day”.

“I think it’s too soon for the Taoiseach to be talking about opening construction and schools and then in same breath saying restrictions will remain until after Easter,” she said.

Rise TD Paul Murphy said it was “unavoidable” that the country would have to stay in lockdown. One of the Dáil’s most prominent supporters of a zero-Covid strategy, Mr Murphy said that the Government should be using the present lockdown to “eradicate community transmission of the virus, rather than just getting the numbers just a little bit lower and then we have a fourth lockdown and a fifth lockdown”.

He said that construction should not be re-opened and advocated “taking a more cautious approach to reopening schools”.

Ms Smith was speaking at the launch of a bill intended to protect pensions of private sector and semi-state workers. She said the bill, which has been endorsed by many groups of retired workers, would require pensioners to be represented when decisions were being made about their benefits.

“As it is they have absolutely no say. Their pensions become the subject of negotiations. They’re changed, they’re cut, they’re moved on, they’re pulled apart - but they’re not even consulted in it. So it changes two things - it gives them access to the state’s industrial relations machinery by law, and it would also give them a higher degree of negotiation than the trustee boards,” Ms Smith said.