Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

When in Opposition, the Green Party made many fine speeches and contributions, with which I agreed. In some cases their policies were included in the programme for Government. What is it all worth if schools are thrown into crisis, facing disruption in rural areas through splitting classes? In the crowded classroom environment in rapidly developing urban areas such as west Dublin, Meath and Kildare, one third of classes have more than 31 pupils and some have up to 35.

This is another issue the Minister might address. The Minister's predecessor buried the statistics on class sizes. As a former teacher in this appointment, can the Minister release the up to date figures for class sizes for every school in the country? These figures are collected by school principals and are submitted to the Department. The Government has problems with IT but counting the number of children in each class and releasing the information is not difficult.

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