Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)

——on this Private Members' motion that does not reflect the seriousness of the current global economic uncertainty. Prudent management of the Government finances is particularly important at a time when tax revenue has fallen so significantly and when world economic conditions are so serious. Even with the budget measures in place, there will still be a significantly increased borrowing requirement in 2009.

The budget measures mean that education is one of just three Departments that have increased budgets for 2009, but it still required tough decisions to be taken to remain within this funding, especially since over 80% of the Department's current funding goes on the salary costs of teachers, special needs assistants, lecturers and others working across the education sector. The Government's commitment to education is clear from its track record over the past decade in providing substantial additional resources, most notably extra teachers to meet previously unmet needs, and from the programme the Government set when it came into office. Much has changed in the past year and the foremost imperative is that we stabilise the public finances. It is only by doing so that we can shelter gains made and put ourselves in the position of being able to make improvements in the future.

We will do this by building on the substantial achievements of recent years. These include 15,000 extra teachers working in our primary and post-primary schools, the targeting of additional supports and resources for children with special education needs to bring the total number of special education staff to over 19,000, the improvements in the capitation grant, which at primary level is now at €200 per pupil and almost €1,000 per pupil for those in special needs classes and special schools, and the additional €79 million in the Department's capital programme, which will facilitate a summer works scheme in 2009 and build on the record provision in 2008 of about 12,000 new school places at primary level.

The issue of class sizes has dominated this debate and has been presented as a crisis. While important, the position is not as stark as that portrayed by the Opposition. The Minister made clear yesterday that all we are doing in primary schools from next September is proposing to staff schools on the same basis as they were staffed just over one school year ago. When the State was able to afford it, we reduced the basis on which primary teachers are allocated to schools from 35 pupils per teacher down to the current level of 27 pupils. The change to a new average of 28 pupils per teacher has to be viewed in that context. Significant additional support went into schools, particularly in the area of special education. We also reduced class sizes for the most disadvantaged in our DEIS schools to an average of one teacher for every 20 pupils in junior classes and an average of one teacher for every 24 pupils in senior classes. These will not be changing in 2009. When we add up all the teachers in the system there is one teacher for every 16 pupils in our primary schools.

The children of this nation are central to the debate today.

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