Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)

I commend Deputy Brian Hayes for tabling this motion and share his concerns about the entire primary sector. Many of those involved in that sector are listening to the debate in the House tonight.

Prior to last year's general election, I attended a meeting in Cork, which the current Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe also attended. More than 1,600 parents turned up to that meeting which was on classroom sizes. One of the things that stuck in my mind that night was how badly Ireland rates in comparison to other countries in the OECD and the EU. Our pupil-teacher ratios, despite having one of the best GDPs and GNPs in Europe, place us as the bottom of the list. Even the 27:1 ratio referred to in the programme for Government reflects an absence of ambition on the issue of classroom size.

The Minister spoke about how this decision will allow him to transfer funds from one area of primary school education to others, such as special needs. This is nothing short of robbing Peter to pay Paul in what is the Cinderella of the education sector. The Minister knows that primary school education, when compared to second and third level, has the least amount of investment per head.

The three schools in my constituency that are affected by this decision are Christ King Mon in Turners Cross, SN Barra Naofa Buachaillí in Beaumont and St. Columba's Boys NS in Douglas. I spoke to the three principals of those schools about the four teachers they will lose as a result of the Department's announcement. They provided the solution to the problem themselves. They suggested that we should return to the situation where the retention figure and the appointment figure had balance and flexibility built in that allowed for a sustainable and measurable approach. What we have now is a guillotine that comes into effect and removes a teacher immediately but the enrolment shortfall may be rectified by the following year's enrolments. That is a very blunt instrument to use but the problem is correctable. Even if one was only to stick to the Minister's ratio aspirations, if we had flexibility built in the problems caused by this blunt instrument could be resolved.

A number of the schools affected have been providing an educational service for decades, with an expertise and experience that has come from working in their communities over a protracted period. Some of those communities are going through a process of regeneration. The last thing we should be doing is sending a signal from this House that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a school loses a teacher, the word on the street is that this school is in decline. Parents will stop sending their children to that school. One of the reasons young people return to communities such as Turner's Cross and other such communities, which have been in existence for 40 or 50 years, is the existence of a successful school. I remind the House that the boys' school in Turner's Cross, one of the schools that will suffer the loss of a teacher, was once attended by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Martin, a former Minister for Education and Science. That makes a statement in this respect.

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