Batt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)

Those of our young people who graduated from our universities and institutes in recent years successfully came through our second level schools under the precise staffing arrangements that will apply from next September. Again, let us put aside the hyperbole. Is it credible to claim that operating as we did up to 2000 will be catastrophic? As I have said already, it is not what I would want if the circumstances were different. The measures being implemented in autumn 2009 will not cause the doomsday scenario being peddled in certain quarters, but failure to stabilise the public finances will.

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