Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

It is an attack upon our children, the most vulnerable in our society. It is an attack on our future because our children will be the generation who will guide us into old age and they will care for us as we have done for our parents. It is an attack on our young generation.

Think of it. It pushes many shy, insecure young four year old children into classes with more than 30 other children. It makes it impossible for under-resourced primary school teachers to cherish all the children equally. How can they find the time or make the space to monitor and guide each child? Where, amidst the demands of curriculum and time, will they get the moment to realise that a child — your child or your grandchild — needs extra help or special time?

We have 450,000 primary pupils in our overcrowded schools. In 12 years we will have as many as 650,000, according to the Central Statistics Office. Our population is growing but we have no place to accommodate our young children in decent classrooms. Already we have an estimated 45,000 primary pupils in prefabs. We have recently learnt that we have 50,000 new homes lying idle in ghost housing estates. This is more than the two years' supply that our growing households and population would require. Many were built in out-of-the-way places with unnecessary tax incentives. Their physical presence is an empty monument to the incompetence of Fianna Fáil, the economically illiterate policies of the Ministers, former Deputy McCreevy and Deputy Cowen, and the greed of the Galway tent.

Bankers and builders fell over themselves to persuade their "bought" political clients that the bubble could never burst. How wrong they were but they would not listen. Fianna Fáil simply did not understand. Last year, the former Taoiseach, Mr. Bertie Ahern, at a conference in Bundoran wondered aloud in an aside why some gloomy forecasters of our economy simply did not commit suicide. As late as last June we were accused by the Taoiseach, Deputy Brian Cowen, of talking down the economy. In years to come, children will ask their parents, who repeatedly and unquestionably voted Fianna Fáil and the Greens, "What did you do in the boom? Where did the money go? Why did I spend my 12 years in school in a prefab?"

The world's economy is changing rapidly, even dramatically, before our very eyes. Economic and political power is shifting from the West — from America, Europe and like-minded countries — to Brazil, China and India. The 500 years of European dominance, of which we are an intrinsic part, is being rebalanced. We live in a very competitive global economy and that competition will increase and intensify as our children come into age. Our future, within the European Union, is the consolidation of our knowledge-based economy and a society built on fairness, equality and solidarity.

The Labour Party supports the national skills strategy which underpins the goal of a knowledge-based economy. We have never challenged it. We helped in part to create it and we support it. We need to increase the number of third level graduates from 55% of the student population to 72% by 2020 to achieve that goal. Today, the children of some of the social groups in our society are already in third level — 100% of the higher professional socioeconomic group and 98% of the farming community. The abolition of third level fees by Labour in Government removed the final psychological and financial barrier for families whose parents had never gone to college.

Education is not free at any level. Ask any parent about that. However, at least it is now accessible to all, or it will be until the Greens and Fianna Fáil reintroduce college fees. We must remember, however, that the journey to third level starts in primary school — in junior and senior infants and all the way to sixth class. Between the ages of four and 15, all children must, by law, attend school. Their parents can be brought to court and fined up to €500 or even sent to jail if they do not ensure their children get that constitutional right, a primary education.

In our primary schools, among the many skills that our children acquire, the most important are that they learn to write and to read. In secondary school, children read to learn so as to successfully sit the junior certificate and leaving certificate and, hopefully, travel on to college. Today, however, 19% drop out of school after they reach 15 years of age. Most, but not all, simply do so because they cannot read. The Minister of State, Deputy Seán Haughey, has reluctantly admitted to me in the Dáil that as many as 500,000 of our citizens are functionally illiterate and that number is growing. Budget 2009 will accelerate that growth. Dropouts drop into unemployment, then long-term unemployment or possibly even worse — self abuse, drug addiction or crime, and perhaps all three. Ask the governor of Mountjoy Prison.

The impact of this budget on our education system is simply disastrous. At a time of need for more investment, we are worsening a key measure in our educational system, the pupil-teacher ratio. As a consequence, we are now heading to the bottom of the OECD education league. The Celtic tiger, under the management of Fianna Fáil and the Greens, is facing relegation.

In so far as we can measure the figures, I estimate that up to 1.5 million people will be directly affected by the measures contained in this pernicious budget, not once but frequently, with disastrous results. Children, students, parents and even grandparents will all be touched, damaged and wounded by these measures. The Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, said the cutbacks would only last for two years. That is wrong. For some, they will be a life sentence.

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