Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after Dáil Eireann and to substitute the following:

"—commends the Government for investing record levels of Exchequer funding in education since 1997 by more than doubling the budget from €3.1 billion to €7.9 billion currently;

—supports the historic decision to provide capital investment funding on a multi-annual basis to the value of €3.9 billion over the next five years;

—commends the Minister for Education and Science on her management of the school building programme which will deliver 1,100 projects over the next 18 months and which has delivered 6,287 projects since 2000;

—notes the initiatives that her Department has taken to ensure that schools are provided as quickly as possible through innovations in the design process and the improvements that have been made in forward planning through greater co-operation with local authorities and the publication of area development plans;

—welcomes the fact that next September there will be 4,000 more teachers in our primary schools than there were in 2002 and notes that these teachers have made an immeasurable difference to the lives of children with special needs, those from disadvantaged areas and those whose first language is not English; and

—further welcomes the allocation of more mainstream classroom teachers for our primary schools for September 2006 and September 2007."

The amendment refers to planning, buildings and numbers of teachers because the motion refers to those issues. My amendment would have dealt with special needs, international children, the curriculum, teacher training, in-service training and all the supports in place for schools, vision and the future but the motion does not refer to any of those areas.

See this speech in context