Education and Training Boards
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-23
============================================================

Louis O'Hara (SF), Galway East

I thank the Minister of State. I visited the Dunmore centre last week. I met with some of the English language students whose classes have been cancelled. These are people for whom English is not their first language. These classes really helped them to integrate into the community and find employment and so on. It was really heartening to hear what a positive difference it has made for them but, unfortunately, their classes have been cancelled. It is not just English language and literacy. We also had Irish language classes being cancelled in Athenry, which is really disappointing when we should be doing everything we can to promote the language. Digital literacy has also been affected in other areas. It is really disappointing because this has impacted on vulnerable and marginalised students in particular. It has also impacted a lot of teachers who were very close to completing their four years and receiving permanent contracts. It was a slap in the face for them after years of service. Altogether, 25 teachers and hundreds of classes have been affected by this. I met representatives of GRETB. They said their hands are tied. They have to deal with pay increases. They cannot touch apprenticeship funding, which is the only pot that has increased. There is, therefore, nothing they can do.

---

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/2026-04-23/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-23