Peter Power (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

I compliment Deputy O'Sullivan and the Labour Party for proposing this motion. The discussion is timely. Any time is a good time to discuss education. There is a much greater appreciation and understanding now for the importance of education in people's lives and in the development of young people's lives, and for the importance of education in developing a good, long-term career. That is why parents invest so much time and money in educating their children. Anybody who has seen the recent coverage in the British general election campaign over the past few days will appreciate its enormous focus on education, which is to the forefront of political discourse not just in this country but in other countries.

Before dealing with the cold, hard statistics of class sizes and pupil-teacher ratios, it is important to examine the environment and context of the debate not just on class sizes but on education in general. There is a much wider, more holistic dimension to the education debate than mere class sizes. That is not to suggest class sizes are not important, but it is wrong to discuss the great issues of education in such a narrow context or with such a narrow focus. That is not to detract from the motion. The Minister of Education and Science very ably set out a fine defence of the Government's position last night. The motion does not recognise the reality of the education debate that is taking place in people's houses, in classrooms and in staff rooms. Issues such as the function and role of teachers are important, and the increasing difficulty getting male teachers to join the education system is a major problem. There are also issues around the built environment of schools, the syllabus and educational disadvantage.

We should discuss the situation of real people facing educational disadvantage before we discuss the numbers, with some children not even getting into the classroom. Their parents, schools and teachers might not even have a debate on how many people are in the classroom. In many areas in Limerick, in my constituency, as Deputy O'Sullivan will be aware, the debate is not on that. The debate is on whether we can get the children into the classroom in the first place. Surely that is the context in which we should be debating matters of real education. Let us argue about how many people are in classrooms afterwards. In many cases in my area, there are difficulties getting the children there, and we need to discuss that.

I had the privilege of serving on the governing authority of the University of Limerick for a number of years. It was clear from the statistics that came before the governing authority in UL that very few people from disadvantaged areas in Limerick were there. We have a greater proportion of disadvantaged and socially excluded areas. They exist in a small, concentrated area compared with the rest of the country. The big debate in UL is not whether we are taking in students from big, small or medium-sized classes; the big debate at governing authority level is how to get students from disadvantaged areas into schools situated there. Those are the real issues.

Nobody can discuss class sizes without discussing the size and condition of the classrooms and the schools where they are situated. It is a far too narrow debate merely to discuss the number of people we can cram into a class, and I acknowledge that they sometimes are crammed into classes. I would prefer to discuss problems such as leaking roofs in those classrooms or the lack of appropriate information technology to support them. With all due respect to the motion's proposers, and although the discussion is timely, to divorce the size of classrooms from class sizes is to introduce a far too narrow focus to the debate. If we seek to reduce class sizes and to increase the number of teachers, surely we need more schools——

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