Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

The Taoiseach has not answered my question. The Government has the enrolment figures which were submitted at the end of September. Is the Taoiseach prepared to publish those figures so we can verify the number of teaching posts that will be lost? The question is a straightforward one — will the Taoiseach publish the figures? I do not have access to the figures but the Department has them.

I note that the Taoiseach has been joined by the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Hanafin, who explained on radio recently that she was going to do young people with disabilities a favour by raising the age at which they can claim disability allowance from 16 to 18 years.

What the Government has done here is quite incredible. I cannot understand how Deputy Brian Cowen, as a Deputy or as Taoiseach, can stand over a situation where language resource teachers will be deliberately withdrawn from schools and will no longer be able to teach English to students who need it. That will also impact on other children who speak English but who need educational stimulation right across the board and it will be to the detriment of the younger generation.

Government Ministers have been asking what Fine Gael proposes to do. They want to know why we cannot have a renewed Tallaght strategy. I have rejected that notion because of the carry-on of the Government. I am glad to see that the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, has arrived back from far away China.

The reason given for the medical cards debacle was the need for cutbacks. My party has proposed that there should be a pay freeze across the public sector for those earning more than €50,000 per annum. If increments are included, that would yield €400 million, or €300 million without increments. In the education sector alone, €300 million would enable all of the services that are due to be cut back to continue.

See this speech in context