Ms Moira Leydon:

We have to be very careful about that. As I said earlier, we have a very good database of educational participation, outcomes and socioeconomic characteristics in Ireland. It is very recent, representative and solid. It is building all the time with the Growing up in Ireland study which is globally at the top. The divides we see in education in terms of broader socioeconomic patterns are not rural-urban. There is no research evidence to say there are marked differences between rural and urban in terms of outcomes of education, whether we define those narrowly in the occupational direction or more broadly in terms of civic engagement and well-being. Dr. Emer Smyth has two decades of exemplary research behind her. Her most recent work is Cherishing all the Children Equally, which is a beautiful compendium of all sorts of post-1916 reflections on where we have gone as a society from the point of view of young people. Her data is that nationally 50% of junior cycle students do not go to local schools. It is well over 65% in the Dublin area.

As the Deputy alluded to, it is a complex issue. School choice is something intrinsic in our second level system. In very many ways, one of the strengths of our system is that for very many decades the State has said we will not have a highly selective schooling system in which there are pronounced differences between socioeconomic classes going to different types of schools. Instead it said the local school will provide, in the first instance, a broad enough curriculum so that it will be suitable for all sorts of ability type and dispositions and, second, that the quality of the local school will be maintained by national standards such as we have now in the Teaching Council, NCCA and the State Examinations Commission. In a way, the question of parental choice in education, as the Deputy alluded to, is very complex and is not just to do with socioeconomic status but also with broader issues. We can certainly send the committee on the Emer Smyth evidence.

I want to come back to one point. The Deputy is absolutely right. I will throw out a few figures. In its 2006 economic survey of Ireland, which was the height of our boom, the OECD said investment in education after the Donogh O'Malley era contributed something like 18% to our overall GDP growth in the previous period. That is incredible. It is very clear that investment in education pays off in terms of developing the human capital to keep the economy going. It would be wrong from the point of view of public policy to only talk about our rural-urban dimension. All the evidence says that the inequality in education outcomes is as pronounced within schools as between schools. In schools there will be very high achievers going off to third level and much lower achievers going to different, not so prosperous, destinations. Public policy is an expression I keep using. From the point of view of public policy, it has to be about making sure that all students in every school have the opportunities to make sure they have those options. I will not labour the point.

I want to respond to Senator Warfield's point.