John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I strongly support the Private Members' motion tabled by the Labour Party. This motion is timely as it coincides with a period when our primary schools are finding that the emphasis for principals, teachers, boards of management and parents has switched from teaching and implementing new curricula to balancing the books, fundraising or collecting thousands of supermarket tokens to obtain some piece of school equipment that should be provided by the Department.

Free education is something we have been told we are getting since as far back as 1966, more than 40 years ago. It has been proclaimed from the rooftops, and rightly so, that our education system is one of the best in the world and a major reason for the birth of the Celtic tiger. Our teachers at all levels have been rightly lauded for delivering this education system. One would have thought that a fair share of the proceeds of the same Celtic tiger would continue to be reinvested in this education system so that we can continue to produce a highly skilled and qualified workforce.

Sadly, the past few months have proved that the opposite is the case. The programme for Government last year promised to increase the numbers of primary teachers by at least 4,000. This, we were assured, would considerably reduce class sizes to a teacher-pupil ratio of 1:24 by 2010. More relevant to tonight's motion, we were told that the capitation grants for our primary schools would be doubled and that grants for support staff such as secretaries and caretakers would be increased significantly. Recent announcements have confirmed that all these promises have been reneged on. Because of these broken promises, class sizes will remain, at best, as large as ever, but will probably increase significantly.

Listening to the Minister and the spokespersons on the opposite side of the House, I did not hear them contradict the assertion in last week's edition of The Irish Times that 140 schools would lose teachers and a further 200 would be unable to appoint new staff due to the Department's abandonment of the commitment to reduce class sizes this year. Water charges, which will ultimately have to be paid by parents, have also been loaded on to schools. How can the Minister justify a primary school capitation grant of €178, compared to €331 per student at second level? Our primary schools and pupils need the same support as second level pupils. Figures suggest that it would cost an extra €70 million — surely only a drop in the ocean compared to the overall education budget — to bring the primary school capitation grant up to the same level as the secondary grant.

All of these cutbacks have come at a time when many schools around the country have been waiting for more than ten years to get approval for new school buildings. Many of these are now finding themselves further down the queue than they were a decade ago. In recent weeks I visited three schools in my constituency, on some occasions along with Deputies from the Government side. I witnessed at first hand overcrowding in Gaelscoil Uileog de Búrca in Claremorris, sewage overflowing in the playground of Midfield national school, and the burst boiler, leaking roof and rotting windows at St. Joseph's national school, Bonniconlon.

The Minister stated that special needs pupils are being looked after well. In one of the schools I visited, a special needs pupil was being taught in the corridor outside the principal's office, looking out on to the road through a glass door through which all visitors to the school had to pass. The staff room is also the principal's office and the secretary's office. Until a couple of years ago when a little room for the purpose was provided by the local community, the delph from the lunch break had to be washed in the toilets. In addition, a student with disabilities had to be wheeled down the road to the local Catholic church to be changed. The restoration of the summer works scheme and a doubling of the capitation grant would not go anywhere near solving these schools' long wait for new buildings, but it would provide some encouragement and allow them to cope with the increased running costs of these schools.

Parents, principals and boards of management understand that funding will always be an issue in our schools, but the failure in last year's budget to deliver meaningful reform has infuriated all the partners in education. A plethora of surveys by many of the stakeholders clearly illustrates that the gap between the increasing costs and departmental funding is getting wider. That gap can only be closed for so long by voluntary fundraising. I strongly support this motion and call on the Minister to double the capitation grant with immediate effect. They should also be paid in time so that the mounting bills can be paid at the appropriate time and not many months late.

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