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

The allocation process for language support teachers is annual in nature and existing provision is not rolled out automatically. Schools will be applying afresh in the spring and early summer of 2009 for the 2009-10 school year, based on their assessment of the prospective needs of existing pupils and any new pupils that will be enrolling.

At post-primary level, each school management authority is required to organise its curriculum, teaching timetable and subject options having regard to pupils' needs within the limits of the approved normal staffing allocation. A school authority may, however, encounter unanticipated difficulty in meeting essential curricular commitments to pupils within the normal staffing allocation. As part of the normal flexibility in the allocation system, the Department will, as is the case every year, consider requests by a school authority for a staffing concession as short-term support.

I acknowledge that the change is likely to have implications for class size in the subjects taken by all pupils and that it may impact on the subject choices offered by schools. Again, to put this in perspective, the change reverts second level schools to the staffing basis on which they operated quite effectively up to the year 2000 and must be seen in the context of the major challenges we, as a Government, face in trying to shelter public services to the greatest extent possible in these exceptional times.

See this speech in context