Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

It is hard to credit that in rich Ireland where another large surplus was announced yesterday more than 100,000 children, or more than one quarter of primary school children, are in classes of 30 or more. This figure has risen in the past three years. Our classes are among the largest in Europe. Would a Government with any sensible priorities not make it a core issue to tackle when it has money to spare? Would a Government which gave a specific undertaking in its programme for Government to the people to reduce class sizes not take the steps necessary to fulfil this undertaking? The Government does not.

Despite having the money and making the specific promise, it has broken its trust with schoolchildren. The promise to children under nine years of age and their families that the pupil-teacher ratio in their classes would be on average 20:1 has no chance of being fulfilled. The Minister admitted this. How can members of the Government hold their heads up with a record like this on such an important issue?

The Minister for Education and Science's standard reply is that she spent the money on tackling disadvantage and children with special needs. However, that does not stand up. It is only this year, after nine years in government, that it finally introduced new measures to tackle educational disadvantage, just before the next general election. Up to now, there has been absolutely no addition to the schemes introduced by Niamh Breathnach in the 1990s, including the ground-breaking early start and breaking the cycle programmes.

On special needs, a Bill was enacted but it has not even been implemented. The resources and specialist staff such as educational psychologists and speech therapists are in such short supply that parents cannot access them when they need them. Schools try to arrange assessments and provide individual education plans for children with special learning needs without the supports they were promised. My colleague, Deputy Stagg, raised this issue on many occasions.

How can the Government state we have an education system which serves the needs of all children when the Department of Education and Science's most recent study of reading shows literacy standards have not improved one iota since 1998 and one in three children in disadvantaged areas experiences serious literacy and numeracy problems? A Government in good economic times must be judged by how it spends taxpayer's money. When it comes to the most basic aspects of the education system, it has failed to make a difference.

I will now outline some of our positive proposals because those on the Government benches constantly bleat that we state nothing positive. The Labour Party presented positive measures which we will implement in government. We published four policy documents on pre-school and primary education alone, including specific proposals to address educational disadvantage, the cost of going to school and the right to read. We also promised one year's free pre-school education for all children and reduced class sizes. I would love to hear the Green Party's policies to which Deputy Gogarty referred. He stated it would have 50 policies but it has not told us any of them yet.

Ireland has passed out most European countries on wealth production. However, we have fallen behind in offering opportunities to our children. This must change and it will change under a Labour Party and Fine Gael Government. Sometimes when I am in Dublin, I watch a programme called "Desperate Housewives". It is about dysfunctional self-obsessed people who, despite having buckets of money to spend, cannot seem to get anything right. We have our own desperate Ministers and it is about time they got out of the drama and back to reality and that we had a general election.

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