Education (Leave for Injuries) Bill 2025: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-18 ============================================================ Pauline Tully (SF), Cultural and Educational Panel On behalf of the Sinn Féin group, I support this Bill wholeheartedly. I commend Senator Harmon on all the work she has done on this extremely important issue. As a former teacher, I witnessed at first hand the dedication that special education teachers and SNAs have to their students with additional needs or those with disabilities. In fact, without the support of SNAs in particular within our mainstream schools we would not be able to include these children in education. It is not that long ago that any student with an additional need or a disability was sent off to an institution and was excluded from society. Thankfully, we have moved a long way from that but we still have a way to go to make sure our education system is fully inclusive. This can only happen if the required supports are put in place within our mainstream schools to ensure that all children get an appropriate education, preferably in their local school alongside their siblings. As Senator Harmon has said, it is not intentional when students injure someone. No SNA or special education teacher I have spoken to has said any different. I dislike the word, as they do. The lashing out which may cause an injury often comes from a place of frustration and it is often due to an inability on the part of the student to communicate what they are feeling. I have to go back to early intervention and community supports, which are severely lacking in our society at the moment. If the children who require the supports get them at an early stage, they will progress. A lot of these issues could be avoided if students got the proper supports, like speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, etc. A number of teachers and SNAs have reached out to me urging me to support this Bill, which of course is not a problem for me. One woman struck a chord with me. It has been two and a half years since she received quite a severe injury in school. She has undergone surgery during this time. She has had a lot of pain and discomfort and ended up with mobility issues as a result. Her assault leave and sick pay leave have been exhausted at this stage so she is currently unpaid. Her family has been reduced to depending on only one income, when before it was a two-income family. They have children who are students in third level education and that is a costly endeavour. She is worried constantly about money and meeting all the expenses they have, especially as we are going through a cost of living crisis. There is also the fact that she has lost her independence. She is not earning anymore, so she is financially dependent on her spouse. That puts any person in a precarious position. There is also the loss of social contact and of getting up and going out to work. She has a lot of different issues. She requires a lot of support, and she has anxiety as a result of what happened to her, and she worries about the day-to-day issues of the loss of income as well. Something has to be done to address the situation. It not fair that any person who is injured while doing their job should end up not having their medical costs covered and having their leave pay cut off at a certain point when they are not fit to go back to work. It has to be extended to cover the period for when they are medically unfit. We also have to recognise that other supports may be required, such as psychological supports or specialist supports like physiotherapy, etc., and they should also be covered. The person who suffered the injury should not be out of the cost of those. As the Bill says, early retirement options should be available in the case of long-term or permanent incapacity to return to work. I know Minister and Senator Crowe referenced that work is being done to look at all these issues and to change the legislation. It is very important that this be done in consultation with the unions and to ensure that the people who are most affected by this are listened to and the change is made. The Minister outlined a number of supports available to people who have suffered an injury. We need to make sure that every school staff member should be aware of the supports and how to access them. It can sometimes be an issue where people do not know. I fully support the Bill and I commend Senator Harmon on her work on it. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-18/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:39+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-18