Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

As the Leader of the Opposition has already pointed out, a Private Members' motion has been tabled and a debate will take place this evening and tomorrow, during which all of these issues can be addressed in some detail. The Government has had to allocate scarce resources and the Department of Education and Science has been given increased resources this year, unlike many other Departments. One of the unfortunate issues is that 80%, or four fifths, of moneys in education relate to payroll and pension costs. On the question of finding savings, we are going back to the teaching schedule of September 2007. This is what is required in order to ensure we maintain the budgetary parameters we have set ourselves. That is what has been proposed by the Minister for Education and Science and adopted and agreed by the Government. Obviously, we must implement these decisions in the interests of recognising that there are certain unavoidable additional costs coming on stream in that budget in 2009 which also have to be accommodated.

All of this is against the background of an increase of 300% in funding for education since 1997. Capital investment in the sector has been unprecedented, as has the increase in the number of teachers and teaching assistants. However, we are in a new economic situation now and budgetary decisions must be taken in that context. Given that approximately three quarters of total day-to-day spending is on health, education and social welfare, to suggest that one could deal with the difficulties without impacting on those areas is to underestimate and fundamentally misunderstand the size of the problem we face.

The debate this evening will enable Members on all sides of the House to discuss the issues and the Minister for Education and Science will take the opportunity to do so and to outline the situation in detail, including in relation to enrolment figures or any other queries Deputy Kenny may have.

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