Mr. Peter Osborne:

The Senator has asked a very apt question. Ms Merron has provided an answer based on the current models. We need to recognise the step before that. The model of funding for education in Northern Ireland in itself wastes a considerable amount of money.

The system of education needs to look at itself and at how it approaches the provision of education. Mr. Collins talked about how there are 50,000 to 60,000 empty desks. That leads to approximately £90 million worth of duplication. That money does not necessarily need to be spent. The really important thing to note is that we spend hundreds of millions of pounds a year to bring young people and children together to compensate for the fact that the education system keeps most of them separated. Only 7% attend integrated schools and most of the rest of the children are educated in almost completely single-identity schools.

With regard to the issue of the funding model, it is absolutely appropriate to look at where we are now and at how we can get a more level playing field to support integrated schools. The fundamental question is actually one of recognising that the current model wastes a huge amount of money and that not tackling the issue of segregation through schools, where five-year-olds are separated and live separate patterns of life, requires us to spend hundreds of millions of pounds trying to bring them back together to try to understand each other a little bit better. In many ways, that is a more fundamental question than that of correcting the current model, although that is also important.