St Killian’s pledge: Taoiseach hopes for all young people to reach full potential

Taoiseach Simon Harris has pledged to raise with Cabinet colleagues the issues surrounding the omission of St Killian’s Special School on Cork’s northside from the first phase of a pilot scheme to restore therapists to special schools.

He has also admitted that the Government must do better in the whole area of providing support for children with special educational needs.

Speaking in response to a question from The Echo before giving the oration at the annual commemoration in Béal na Bláth for Michael Collins, Mr Harris said that “finance should never be a constraint” and that he was eager to see “very significant steps in October’s budget to ramp up therapy provision” in special schools.

In a wide-ranging address, Mr Harris paid tribute to Michael Collins as a revolutionary who brought a new energy to an old conflict.

The Taoiseach also spoke of the challenges facing this generation which, he said, included the threat to democracy from people who would “tear it down and those who would let it wither”.

Mr Harris said democratic values were being “assailed and attacked by disinformation and the erosion of trust in institutions around the world and much closer to home”.

In the 35-minute address to a smaller-than-anticipated crowd of several hundred people, including relatives of General Collins, Fine Gael ministers including Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohue, and his Cabinet colleagues Peter Burke and Patrick O’Donovan, the Taoiseach laid a special emphasis on the challenges facing us as well what he described as the “revolutionary opportunity that is Ireland”.

He said that there were many paths to freedom but they all began with education.

“My vision is to create an Ireland where every young person, no matter their background, can realise their full potential,” he said.

“This means guaranteeing access to education for all, and it also means revolutionising the quality of education, so that we can empower the next generation to pursue the challenges of today and the jobs of tomorrow with confidence and resilience.

“Opportunity should never be a privilege reserved for the few. Our country is only fair and just and truly free if every student is given the tools they need to succeed.”

Earlier while speaking to reporters, Mr Harris said he had heard the parents of the children attending St Killian’s Special School as they explained their requirement for inclusion in the pilot scheme or financial support so they could hire therapists to come into the school, arrangements which were in place but needing €150,000 to be realised.

“I must say I was very taken by the very constructive way in which they had clearly engaged to try and find a way forward for their children,” he said. “I certainly intend to engage with Government colleagues to see if anything more can be done to assist.

“What my colleague, Minister Hildegarde Naughten, has now done with Minister Foley is receive Government sanction to begin the process of rolling out therapies in schools.

“You have to start somewhere and we started with a number of schools now with a view to growing that number as quickly as possible.

“From my perspective, finance should never be a constraint, it should be the capacity of the HSE and others to recruit the staff to get a place,” he said.

Mr Harris said that he was personally committed to making progress as he had set up a Cabinet committee on disability which he also chaired.

“This is not in a place where I’d like us to be and I’m very proud of much of the work of governments that I’ve been involved with,” he said.

“This is an area in which we must do better, I do acknowledge that.”

Meanwhile, in his address, Mr Harris said Michael Collins “provided hope to an entire nation during years of fear and uncertainty” and that he “would have understood the challenges facing us today”.

“He would have understood that hope is crushed when challenges are allowed to seem endemic, overwhelming, insurmountable,” said the Taoiseach.

“This is a great country and shame on those who like to talk it down for their own cheap, political gain – yes, the challenges we face in Ireland, the challenges the world faces may never be greater but we will never solve and address them if we allow it to be accepted that anger is a legitimate form of political discourse, that hate and violence become common responses to difficult decisions.

“Misinformation and lies are the greatest risk of democracy and peace in our time.

“Nowhere is that more evident here than in the area of migration.

“There is a small group of people who want a country whose history has been woven by mass emigration to diminish the value of migration.

“They seek to create a division among those who were once forced to leave their home in search of a better life with others who are now seeking to do the same.

“There are some who wave a tricolour and claim patriotism while betraying the founding principles this country prides itself on – freedom, equality, opportunity.”

On housing, Mr Harris said the Government was on target to build more than almost 40,000 homes this year and pledged to build 250,000 over the next five years.

He said that the proceeds from the sale of bank shares, acquired when the Government bailed out the banks in the 2008-10 financial crash, should be “directed towards developing housing”.