Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I reject the claim that the quality of education or teaching has disimproved. Students are certainly not suffering in that regard. There is no doubt that the 4,000 extra teachers employed in the system could have been deployed to reduce class size but the Government chose to prioritise children with special needs, who had been forgotten for many years, and disadvantaged schools. That is why, under projects like DEIS, pupil-teacher ratios are 20:1 in junior classes and 24:1 in senior classes in the most disadvantaged schools. Nobody could argue with that.

Some 5,000 teachers have been employed to work with children with learning difficulties or special needs. Formerly, these children were not included in our schools and were the first to drop out, so they had to be targeted. There is a tendency on the part of classroom teachers to ignore these extra staff, even though classroom teachers also benefit when children receive extra support from resource and learning support teachers.

Having addressed these priorities, we have now given a commitment to reduce class sizes over the next two years. I am unable to give a commitment beyond that.

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