Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

As every school child knows, the Proclamation of 1916 promises proudly to cherish all children of the nation equally. As Easter approaches and the Minister for Education and Science heads to the annual round of teacher conferences, her report card for this year will consist of an endless line of broken promises and a big black mark. I will remind her of the promises she has broken this year alone, namely, failure to provide adequate capitation grants for primary schools as promised by Fianna Fáil before the general election, the abandonment of the solemn election promise to reduce class sizes — the INTO arranged monster meetings in every town and Fianna Fáil promised solemnly that class sizes would be reduced to give children room to learn in the modern primary school — the axing of the summer grants scheme of special and emergency repairs and the long-fingering and axing of many school extension programmes and prefab replacements.

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