Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I thank the Taoiseach for his reply, because he has answered the question I put. There will be no change and the counter-motion tabled by the Government confirms this. The Taoiseach is correct. There is not a fig-leaf, whether organic or genetically modified, to cover the political embarrassment of the Green Party. The Taoiseach's Green Party colleagues in Government are telling parents they will negotiate changes in the education cuts announced by the Government and the Minister for Education and Science.

I acknowledge the variation in the number of language support teachers. The Minister already said he was open to considering applications from individual schools. However, it is clear from the Taoiseach's reply that the Government's position and that of the Minister for Education and Science is that there will be no change. This is significantly at variance with what the Taoiseach's partners in Government are trying to communicate. The Green Party has found itself in a situation where it has been running the education issue up the flag pole for some time. It made a significant issue of the matter at the last general election. It is confronted with a motion on which it must vote. However, to buy political time and space Green Party members said, following their meeting yesterday, they would negotiate some changes, that Deputy Paul Gogarty would negotiate with the Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, that it could take more than two days, but if left with them they would get results.

The Taoiseach's reply is clear, they will get no results. The so-called negotiation between Deputy Gogarty and the Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, is a waste of time. It is simply a fig-leaf, a way of getting over the politically embarrassing hump of this evening and tomorrow and a means to buy time. The Taoiseach's answer to my first question, which I fully acknowledge, is clear. The Taoiseach, the Minister for Education and Science and the Government have decided that they are not for turning on the education issue. This presents a fundamental challenge and difficulty for the Taoiseach's partners in Government, as the Green Party indicated it wishes to negotiate on the matter.

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