Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)

As a teacher recently said to me, it is amazing that at this juncture of our economic cycle, when the Minister for Finance is calling on us all to be patriotic, it is the young, elderly and disadvantaged who are being called upon to be the most patriotic.

The budget will increase class sizes and diminish the learning experience of children for years to come with the staff schedule that has been announced by the Minister. The Government and the Department of Education and Science have asserted that these changes will result in the loss of just 200 teaching jobs at primary and secondary level. However, the INTO claims that changes to staffing schedules, the cap on English language teachers and reduced numbers of teachers for formerly designated disadvantaged schools will result in the loss of up to 1,000 teaching posts at primary level, while the TUI estimates that up to 1,200 jobs could be lost at second level.

The proposed cuts at primary level have the potential to be devastating because they will affect children during their formative years on the educational ladder. The cuts will not simply mean one extra child per classroom, as many have claimed. The changes will mean that children will have to be divided up between classes from September 2009. A school with three teachers for senior infants, for example, will only have two teachers from next year. As Deputy Quinn has pointed out, matters will be exacerbated by the fact that the primary school population is expected to grow by 100,000 over the next seven or eight years.

Education is the ultimate passport for young people. It is a passport to the future, to freedom and liberty, to opportunity and to the workplace. Without the vision and boldness of the former Fianna Fáil Minister for Education, the late Donagh O'Malley, I would never have seen the inside of a secondary school. I would have fulfilled my destiny as a manual labourer on building sites in Ireland and Britain, as would many like me.

It is important to value our education system as holistic, with more than just the classroom involved. As the late Brother Keegan, who taught in the CBS in Mullingar used to say, "the sharp mind is aided by a healthy, fit body". He believed that those who succeeded on the playing fields were also likely to progress academically. In that context, games were very important. Mr. Liam Mulvihill, who taught me, used to arrive at school at 8.15 a.m. in his Anglia car, all the way from Kenagh, and bring us out to the training grounds at Ballinacarrigy national school. He went on to become the Director General of the GAA. Indeed, that organisation is up in arms over these cuts because it recognises that they will have a severe impact on children.

As a Deputy, I receive a great many letters but never before have I seen such a tide of correspondence as that generated by these cuts.

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