Deirdre Clune (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I congratulate Deputy Brian Hayes on his tenacity in bringing this motion before the House tonight. It is an issue that was extremely important in last year's general election. We all remember the campaign by the INTO to highlight the fact that the previous Government did not follow through on its commitment to reduce the pupil-teacher ratio in classrooms, particularly in primary education. That was a real issue for parents, students and teachers.

The Minister represented my constituency of Cork South Central until the last election. In that area, three schools are losing teachers. The boys' schools in Turner's Cross and Beaumont are losing one teacher each, while the boys' school in Douglas is losing two teachers. I spoke to the principals of those schools and they are not losing teachers because of falling numbers but because of a commitment made by the Government that it would reduce the pupil-teacher ratio from 27:1 to 26:1 and because they based their enrolment policy last year on that commitment. Last week, they received a letter from the Department stating that they would be losing those teachers, even though there will be extra demand for places in some of those schools this September. This means that the pupil-teacher ratio will go up instead of down. That is the sting in the tail for those schools.

What is so disappointing is that this does not really involve a large amount of money as each post would cost about €60,000. Even just restricting this to the 28 schools that are losing teachers, it is not a great amount of money in the overall budget. The Minister and his colleagues should consider this motion. Many of them made a commitment in front of packed halls last year to pupils that they would support a reduction in the pupil-teacher ratio. Now is their opportunity to do it. It will not break the budget and I ask the Minister to look at this issue. It is his first opportunity to come before this House for Private Members' business and it would be a break with precedent set by his colleague.

The OECD report showed that 4.6% of our GDP is spent on education. That is very low compared to the OECD average of 5.8%. I heard Professor Drumm on the radio suggesting we should not compare ourselves to Germany in respect of health spending because it has an older population. If that is the case, we should be spending above the EU average because our population is so young. The pupil-teacher ratio is not just about space for desks or cubic capacity for pupils but about giving teachers an opportunity to do the job they are trained to do: imparting information, supporting individual students and helping pupils with needs. Anyone who visits a school will see it is not a question of standing in front of rows of students and using a blackboard but of group teaching and supporting students in groups, which demands more attention and time from teachers. It is not rocket science that the fewer students a teacher has, the more support can be given to individual students. It is accepted Government policy and I ask the Minister to review this matter. It is small beer in the overall scheme of things but it will make a major difference to these schools, pupils and teachers.

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