Mary Hanafin (Minister, Department of Education and Science; Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

There has to be. It works on the following basis. There are 4,000 schools in the country. Traditionally, the only way teachers were allocated was on the basis of numbers on 30 September of the preceding year. Given increasing population and school numbers, we then introduced allocation on the basis of projected numbers. It was on this basis that St. Mary's boys national school made its submission and was allocated the teaching post. I was not aware it had shut down a pre-school, nor am I aware from where it got the money to pay for the two pre-school teachers — I am sure it did not come from its capitation or DEIS funding.

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