Education and Training Provision
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-07
============================================================

Jen Cummins (SD), Dublin South-Central

I thank the Minister of State. As he said, it really is a wonderful centre. The thing is, however, it is not a special school. When it is designated as a special school, that means a primary school, which it is not. These are young people. In fact, some of them are 16. They can decide their own medical issues. They can apply for a driving licence at 17. It is not a special school. I know the Department wants to designate it as a special school, but it is not one. Therefore, a category has to be made for this type of school.
The iScoil is designated as a primary school as well. There is a review of the blended learning centres for iScoil that has not been published yet. I imagine it will say that it is absolutely excellent. I say that as somebody who ran an iScoil in a blended learning centre. The challenge is that if we are trying to fit education provision centres into something they are not, that is where we will reach difficulties. A primary school does not do the leaving certificate and junior certificate, so how do we do that? These young people will be doing Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI, levels 3, 4 and 5. They will be doing the leaving certificate applied. Therefore, it is not a special school. A different category has to be created.
What is quite difficult for me to understand, though, is that if the Department has been engaging - I believe it has, I am not questioning that part - why it has taken three years to discuss this when it has been going since the 1970s. That special category to recognise centres like the Cork Life Centre has to be put into the Education Act. It is just taking too long for the Department to come up with the answer for that. In the meantime, we have staff who are so absolutely dedicated but kind of flabbergasted as to why it is taking so long and why they have to prove so much that the work they are doing is saving people's lives. It is bringing people back into education when the education system has failed them. The young people did not disengage from the education system. The mainstream education system neglected them and labelled them as "others" and they were let down by that system. The young people were failed. It is not that the young people disengaged or failed. It is that the system failed them. The Cork Life Centre is there, however. It will be able to bring them back to a way of learning that appreciates them for who they are and builds back their self-esteem and their love of learning, which, ultimately, is a thing that we want to see for every young person.
I am way over time so I better stop talking.

---

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/2026-05-07/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-07