Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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I have loads of questions. Unfortunately, they are not all related to the subject matter of the Supplementary Estimate.

The pension issue arises year in, year out. It is no joke - it is a significant amount of money. We receive assurances every year that it will be sorted by the following year, but that has not come to pass. The Department does not seem to be able to deal with the issue which has to do with forecasting.

The forecasting of teacher supply is constantly underestimated. I wonder sometimes if it is an accounting trick. A grant to a school or a programme can always be cancelled but the pensions must be paid. Is this simply an accounting trick played every year to ensure the Department can get an extra €100 million and then go back for the Supplementary Estimate at the end of the year because the Oireachtas cannot refuse funding for pensions? What has happened in the Department to change this?

The issue about the European Social Fund is very strange. Why was the application only made in November if the Department is expecting funding to be in place this year? Is there a reason for that? It seems to be the case of "the money was only resting in the account" from the Department's perspective, because it is claiming a Supplementary Estimate that it hopes will not be needed. In that eventuality, it will be passed back to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. If it does not it will go into the account. I am not sure this is a good way to deal with hundreds of millions of euro, and it causes me some concern in the context of the fact that the share of voted expenditure allocated to education has been decreasing over the last number of years. Education is not getting its fair share. It had been allocated 16.6% of overall voted expenditure but in 2018, it has decreased to 16.3%. I do not know how this couple of hundred million euro, thrown in at the end and for which we will see no educational benefit, will affect those percentages. It is disappointing, and it shows a significant lack of prioritisation by the Government. It is highly unfair. These figures have been provided by the Oireachtas Library and Research Service. They have not been noted by anyone; very few of us have spoken out about this. It is really worrying. The fact that it has been getting a smaller share of the pie each year for the last number of years speaks loudly to the Government's commitment to education. I would not like to see the figures massaged by money that will rest temporarily in the account or a temporary extraordinary figure for pensions where students would not actually see a benefit. The Minister should comment on that and tell us what he will do to ensure that education will become more of a priority for the Government when it comes to budgets.