Pat Carey (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on budget 2006. What would the main Opposition parties have done differently? What would they have changed if given the opportunity? I listened to Deputy Kehoe rail against lack of planning in education. I remind him and others who are interested that when Senator O'Rourke was Minister for Education, Fianna Fáil introduced legislation to recognise the institutes of technology which were then RTCs, while the Dublin Institute of Technology was underpinned with legislation. The former Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Martin, was involved in setting up the National Qualifications Authority. This has grown through the research and development fund which was set up. This budget introduced the strategic innovation fund — the fourth level about which we speak.

Deputy Kehoe also talked about primary level. I remind Deputies opposite that they handed over the national finances in good stead but it is very easy to do that when their Minister for Social Welfare gave almost the lowest social welfare increases in the history of the State in his last budget in 1997. That Government had seven school building projects in the country. This year there will 1,200 school building projects.

I remind Deputies opposite that teacher training had been cut back and those of us who were at the coalface talked about something dreamed up by civil servants whereby we could get the odd extra teacher through something called the "demographic dividend". The reason was that no teachers were being trained. I will not even attempt to remind the House how many additional teachers are now in our schools as well as special needs assistants and resource teachers. There will be 500 additional primary teachers in our schools in the next two years.

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