Third Level Education
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-11
============================================================

Ruairí Ó Murchú (SF), Louth

It is a vital piece of work. It will commence in 2026. I ask the Minister to give me a rough outline as to what he thinks this deadline is. I do not think anybody here would dispute that there has been a need to do this for a long time in relation to further and higher education and to find out how we best suit those with disabilities and ensure we can keep them within the educational process.
I am obviously disappointed - I have told the Minister this before - that the review in relation to personal assistants had not happened previously. That would have facilitated the WRC to look at the contracts and the other issues for the workers. They got a slight pay increase but they need to be on a similar rate, whether it is to an SNA or some other educator, and then there are those rights. They do not have a 52-week contract. At this point they will be looking at going back on a social welfare payment, with all the difficulties that occur in relation to this. We really have to facilitate them around that. I ask the Minister to come back with a timeline and a means by which we deal with this.

---

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/dail/2025-12-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-11