Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)

She runs around with bits of paper to her people while the Labour Party is fighting to get schools. She runs around to some of her own Deputies who hardly know where is the school. The Minister should not try that racket with me. She reneged on the pupil-teacher ratio commitment.

I blame the INTO as well. They always play nice ball with every Fianna Fáil Deputy they meet. The Labour Party tells the truth. Every Fianna Fáil candidate tells the INTO that they love it and embrace every teacher. They promise to reduce the pupil-teacher ratio, which must be the fault of the Labour Party. It was in Government 40 years ago and that is the reason for the current pupil-teacher ratio. It is all our fault. The Labour Party is a proponent of public expenditure for productive purposes and where could be more productive than the education system and where more productive than at primary school level?

I remember free education as a young person in the 1960s. It is not free now. People are running around the place, at race nights, bingo drives and cake sales.

The Minister's Department is giving principals the runaround. They spend months trying to contact the architectural section trying to get details of what would satisfy the requirements imposed by the Department for school buildings. I can prove that the Minister will not give them a reply. Perhaps she will get someone to telephone principals, who must expend much time doing work that is not really their job. Boards of management are running around fund-raising. Parents' associations and teachers are misled as to the school project that is going ahead. When the plug is pulled, it is not a cutback but it is said the school misunderstood the letter it was sent. Everyone must be stupid. I read the letters and I am not stupid. I had to raise holy war in the Dáil. Some Fianna Fáil councillors who ran suggested I was totally off the wall. Clonmellon was supposed to go ahead in October. Gainstown was supposed to go ahead belatedly, but what about Sonna and Loughegar national schools? They were put on the back burner but now the Minister does not have the guts to face them. There will be another announcement that will drag it into 2009 and 2010. The Minister must think we came up the River Liffey in a banana boat, with a goose pulling it.

Why are there so many prefabs in the country? It has taken two months to count them and the Department does not know how many there are. It is scandalous that nobody can give a straight answer to a straight question. Free education is a myth and the Labour Party illustrated how Ireland lags behind the OECD in terms of expenditure on education. It is no surprise that on the ground significant deficits arise. Parents' associations, boards of management, principals and other stakeholders are compelled to go begging to pay the costs of heating, electricity, repairs, insurance and cleaning. Could the Minister not try to help them?

The State Claims Agency operates on behalf of the State. Why can we not have centralised insurance payments?

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