Mr. John Boyle:

The DEIS question is important to Deputy Ó Ríordáin and to me. It was a scandal that the class size reductions were not passed on to the most marginalised children, except in the senior DEIS schools. It appears to me that the reason it was done for the senior DEIS schools was because the school in Bonnybrook had a class size of 24 and now the school in Donnybrook was going to have a class size of 24 or 25 as well and we really could not be having that as it would not look good. Therefore, we reduced it for the senior schools but not for the vertical or junior schools. There is a €5 million budget and we will be having a meeting with the officials. We wrote to the Minister immediately after budget day. We are having a meeting. We want to have that meeting soon because we want to make sure additional staffing is put into the most marginalised children.

Our President, Mary Magner, made a famous point recently that the best PPE one can have in a primary school is a smaller class. She was not being flippant about that but it addresses Deputy Ó Ríordáin's question about underinvestment down the years. When the Government needed the schools to open to support the community and provide education for children, it could find €400 million fairly quickly but we were looking for that money for about a decade before that. The lesson to be learned is that if we invest for the best we will get the best.