Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

The Green Party claimed that it was prioritising education. I listened to Deputy Paul Gogarty more than 100 times claiming that his party was prioritising education but there is no Green Party Deputy here tonight. It is disgraceful to renege on these promises and to tell the children of this country that they should tell the truth while Government Deputies come into this Chamber, in good times and not so good times, and renege on a specific promise to them. It is disgraceful.

In the limited time available I wish to refer to the school in my constituency that is listed in the motion, namely, the JFK Memorial School, which I visited this morning and on a number of previous occasions. The school was one child short at the cut-off date at the end of September. The school now has that additional child, who moved from the north west of the country. If the promise had not been made by the Government, that child could have moved to the school a week earlier to ensure that the school would retain its teacher. The school believed the promise and had the numbers that it thought it would need to keep the teacher at the time.

A number of other schools listed here are in the same situation. Those schools, at least, should be allowed to retain their teacher. In all good faith, they thought they had the numbers to do so. They believed the Government of this country and those that were elected to govern and understood they could keep their teacher. It was the Government which broke its word; the schools did nothing wrong.

I know the negative effect this will have on the school in my constituency. Indeed, all Deputies know the effect it will have. We have the second highest average class size in a long list of European Union countries. The only country that is worse than us is the United Kingdom and we do not want to take example from it. Let us imagine what it is like, for example, to be a child with special needs, most of whom are being mainstreamed now, a quiet child sitting at the back of the class trying to get attention or to be a teacher trying to cope with all of the different needs in a classroom with the size of the classes we have in this country. We still have a very large number of children in classes of more than 30 and some in classes of more than 35. That small children, who so need to get a good start, should be subjected to that, is appalling. The Government claims it is committed to education but reneges on a promise to children at the very time when they need individual attention — in the early years of their school lives. The Government Deputies blithely pronounce that they have priorities. What could be more of a priority than the small children in primary schools in this country?

Many Deputies attended meetings in schools before the general election. I attended numerous such meetings because I was my party's education spokesperson at the time. There were three Private Members' motions in the House on class sizes in the space of a couple of years. We all know how important an issue it is. We heard the promises and saw rooms packed full. Parents, because they know how important it is, made the effort to attend the meetings. Our party gave commitments on reducing class sizes and on the need for 4,000 more teachers and we did the sums. We stood by our promise and intended to implement it if we were in Government. I cannot understand how people can vote for the parties in Government after two broken promises on one of the most important issues, namely, the chance we give our young people in our schools. Once again, I find it absolutely mind boggling.

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