Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

The Minister states that funding for special needs is not being cut and thereby covers up the truth that the resources available for schools are being greatly diminished because thousands of extra children are pouring into the education system every year. The reality lies in the examples Deputies have cited from their respective areas. In the greater Blanchardstown area, the fastest growing area in western Europe with a population of 100,000, schools were cynically told about the cuts only days before they broke up for the summer. Between them, two primary schools in the area will lose 4.5 English language support teachers and two special needs assistants. This is a grievous cut which will leave the 360 students in one of the schools in question, Scoil Mhuire junior, with one special needs assistant. While the weasel words that children have access to special needs may be true, if 1,000 people have access to one pint of water, it will not go around very far. The Government uses words to cover up the reality of what it is doing.

The cuts will have serious effects on the general school population by virtue of additional disruption and distractions which will take place for teachers and the broad student population and, unfortunately, in terms of those special needs students who, as a result of not receiving the support they need, will not make the advances they could make, will subsequently fall through the cracks in society and, in a minority of cases, will fall into a life of crime. This will come at a terrible cost to the individuals in question and society.

What is truly shameful is the choice that is being made. The Labour Party-Fine Gael coalition continues the previous policy of transferring billions of euro of the resources of Irish people and taxpayers into the coffers of private banks to pay off their private gambling debts arising from insane speculation in the Irish property market and makes a priority that they must be paid, while cutting services for our most vulnerable people. For Labour Party Deputies to use the chaos caused by the system of speculation in the financial markets as an excuse for implementing cuts and standing behind the Government is pathetic. How they have forgotten the great socialist, James Connolly, who, in simple words 100 years ago, pointed out how capitalism is inherently a system of crisis and therefore a system that, on a regular basis, visits misery upon society and the working class, in particular, the poorest.

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