State Examinations
Seanad Éireann — 2024-10-08
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Tim Lombard (FG), Agricultural Panel

When we had the commission members before the committee, they informed us it would take two or three years. We are still in that timeline. It is outrageous that we do not have a timeline here. We will have a situation where kids will be doing their junior certificate and they will not have the accommodations required to reach their full potential. Children will get assistive technology to help them along that road but it is the case that if a person has a C-Pen that reads the stuff, it takes longer to do than physically reading it. This is not reinventing the wheel. In France, for example, a dyslexic student gets 33% extra time. This is what happens in other countries. Parents and the community are frustrated because we are not being listened to. We are stuck in a process and that process is taking too long. The commission needs to review it. A report was produced in 2008 saying that additional time should be allocated for dyslexic kids, yet we are only now doing a review. It really is just not good enough. The Minister needs take control of this because if not, we are failing our young people and we are putting them under more pressure and strain. Society and life is tough enough without having this bureaucracy affecting them. My frustrations are just beyond belief because there is no movement here. The SEC board seems to run on a different planet to the rest of the world. There could be consultation after consultation but they are not going to make the decision we need them to make. They are letting our people down. I am frustrated here. I totally appreciate that it is not the Minister of State's brief but the senior Minister needs to take control, otherwise we are letting down a cohort of people in our society that needs our help and support, and the bureaucracy is just killing us.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2024-10-08/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:19+00:00
Sitting date: 2024-10-08