Shane McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

I compliment Deputy Brian Hayes on introducing this motion, which is crucial. I hope that in four years' time the parents and teachers of Ireland will recognise the work he is doing on their behalf and that what happened last year will never happen again. I have a list of schools before me, including those in Moynalty, Julianstown and Rathfeigh, which were promised in March last year that new schools would be built and so forth. According to the previous Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Mary Hanafin, we do not have the money to do it now. In four years' time, such promises will be made again.

I wish to address the former Minister's legacy in Laytown. For any school to be functional, it needs good accommodation, adequate staff and sports facilities. These are what we are without in Laytown. There is no school and there are no staff and no sports facilities. I am delighted that Minister is gone from office, as are the people of Meath. She basically filled them with false promises and then did a runner. I hope the new Minister will take a trip to County Meath to see the mess left by the previous Minister.

Two years ago when there was uproar about provision of classrooms in a school in Laytown, the solution put forward by Fianna Fáil and the other representatives in office was to put the children on a bus, bring them to where Paul Carberry and Barry Geraghty were the day before and accommodate them in the weighing room at a racecourse. The people made a decision on that. That is why Deputy Thomas Byrne and myself were taken on board to address the matter. That is perhaps why Deputy Byrne was elected, and rightly so, given that he worked hard in this respect.

However, I object to the false promises that were made. We are dealing with pupils and teachers. I would not want the job of teacher. To ask them to handle 24 children is bad enough, but they are being asked to teach classes of 33 or 34 and to educate them properly. That is simply not on.

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