Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I welcome the opportunity to discuss the crucial issue of class size and compliment Deputy O'Sullivan on tabling the motion.

Education is another of the coalition's monumental failures. This time the failure cannot be blamed on the Progressive Democrats as Fianna Fáil has held the education and science portfolio for all of the past ten years. Probably the most glaring failure of all is the failure to reduce class size. Everybody knows that the number of children in a class determines the amount of time and attention the individual child receives from the teacher. Everybody also knows that if a child has learning difficulties and there is no time to address these difficulties in the classroom there is a real danger that child's education may be adversely affected and impacted upon.

Small classes and early intervention contribute enormously to good quality learning and give a child the maximum opportunity to progress at the earliest stage in life and education. The present nationwide campaign by the INTO highlights the extraordinary failure of the Government to properly resource Irish education. While Ireland is top of the league of wealthy countries in the EU and the OECD it is second from the bottom in terms of class size. The average class size in Lithuania is 15, in Ireland it is 24. There are more than 100,000 pupils in primary schools taught in classes of more than 30 pupils. This is totally unacceptable.

In 2002 the Government agreed in An Agreed Programme for Government that the average size of classes for children under nine years of age would be brought below the international best practice guideline of 20:1. No action whatsoever was taken on this commitment by the Government until three years had expired. Consequently, little or no progress has been made in reducing class size to date. If the Government had delivered on its promise, two-thirds of all classes would have fewer than 20 pupils and all younger children up to the age of nine would be receiving the individual attention they are entitled to and so often need. In reality, more than 80% of primary school children are in much bigger classes than were promised five years ago when this Government took office. It is a sad and dismal fact that this Government has reneged on its promise to eight out of every ten pupils in schools in Ireland today.

What is needed — what we will deliver in Government in any agreed programme and what is lacking in An Agreed Programme for Government to date — is a five year plan with targets set and audited for each year in terms of additional recruitment of staff, teachers, extra classrooms, planning ahead for new schools and the extra resources required to deliver on those commitments.

Cherishing the children of the national equally must be our priority at all times. This was very difficult when Ireland was an impoverished country for more than 75 years since these words were written in the Proclamation in 1916. Now we are a wealthy country but have become an impoverished society in the critical areas of health, housing and education. That is the real failure of the Government. It has failed the people, young and old, who most need its assistance. The Minister's boast on education which is contained in the amendment is embarrassing. It reads that she "welcomes the fact that last year there were 80,000 less primary school children in classes of 30 or more than in 1997." It took ten years for the Minister to remove 80,000 children from classes of 30 or more not from classes of 20 or more, as was the target, or as in Lithuania, from classes of 15. What an empty embarrassing boast. The Minister should be ashamed to state that as part of her amendment.

In her amendment the Minister refers to investment in school buildings and modernisation under the National Development Plan 2007-2013. Hard pressed parents throughout the length and breadth of Ireland know only too well of the failure of the Government to engage in spatial planning, to plan ahead so that when new developments take place no provision has been made for educational and community facilities. Houses without schools are par for the course for this awful Government.

In my constituency, Gaelscoil Barra has been waiting for ten years for a new school in Cabra. Children have been taught in old dilapidated prefabs since 1997 when this Government came into office.

On the eve of the 2002 election the Taoiseach avoided a protest march from Parnell Square by promising a new school if and when he was elected to a second term of office. Now five years later the Minister has replied to a series of parliamentary questions from me in recent months and years in which she said she is working hard on delivering the school. What is she doing? She is still seeking a site after ten years and has begun to employ the services of her colleague, the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Parlon, who has responsibility for the Office of Public Works. I wait in anticipation to see what the Taoiseach pulls out of the hat this time as the election looms over the coming weeks.

This is a Government of failure. It fails to provide for the elderly in terms of the health service and our children in terms of the education service.

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