Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputy for his kind comments. I thought he was quite a good Minister for Finance. Those who manage my Department, the Secretary General and the senior management group, are highly efficient, highly committed, dedicated people, who give all their time to managing a budget of €9.3 billion. They oversee a system of 4,000 schools, seven universities, up to 20 higher education institutions and look after the interests of individuals from the age of three right through to adulthood. We look after youth groups, adult literacy groups, people who are within formal systems and people who are outside of formal systems. The only person who has accused the Department of Education and Science in the manner in which Deputy Quinn has done here today is Deputy Quinn.

It is most unfair to say that to a Department which runs an education system that is very efficient. Not only that, it does it in the spirit of partnership with patron bodies, management and unions — always with the interests of the students at heart. When one is trying to manage a budget of that amount where there are 4,000 boards of management, of course it presents challenges for them and for the Department. It works extremely efficiently.

We recognise that quite a number of demands have been made on the Department in recent years because of the growing population and the very positive Government policies that have ensured extra teachers have been put in place where needed without waiting for the permanent accommodation. It would have been very easy for me, two or three years ago, to decide, even though I wanted children who were slow learners and had special educational needs to have immediate access to a teacher, to wait until there was a place to put that teacher. We did not do that, we put in the teachers and that created the demand for extra temporary accommodation. We gave it at the time because the children came first and the buildings came second. I will stand over that policy any time.

See this speech in context