David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)

I believed the Deputy was doing it out of respect for the procedure of the House, but that is another matter.

I made the point in a debate in the House in July that inflation was the highest it had been for quite some time and that unemployment was rising rapidly. According to a report on the day in question, electricity costs were due to rise by 20%. I said we were facing a crash in the housing sector and a perfect storm in that everything was coming together. Unfortunately, I have been proved correct in that everything did come together. I stated in July that Ministers should appear before every Dáil committee to outline their plans in detail. Unfortunately, this did not happen and the Government waited and let the summer go by as circumstances worsened. It introduced a budget that was rushed, poorly thought out and lazy. This is clear because, before the ink was dry, the Government had to row back on three major issues.

The Government made three major blunders. It had to reverse the incorrect decision on medical cards for older people. The original decision in this regard should never have been made. It had to reverse its shocking decision on the disability allowance, which was also wrong and affected the most vulnerable despite the Minister for Finance telling us the budget was to protect them. It did not protect them and the intention all along was to hit them, so to speak. The Government had to reverse the levy imposed on those on very low pay. This levy was a savage attack on people on the minimum wage. These three reversals alone show the budget was poorly thought out and cobbled together. It focused on hitting the most vulnerable and weak, which is worrying. We have had meetings throughout the country with teachers, parents and farmers. Government Deputies have said they are listening to these groups, feel their pain, will tweak this and that and see what happens in the Finance Bill.

Many of the budgetary measures are self-defeating and I will mention a few, first making reference to education. I know the area of education pretty well. The Minister for Education and Science told us that research shows that reducing class sizes really does not matter. I was curious about the research he quoted and asked him to identify it in a parliamentary question. In a reply I received yesterday, he mentioned a study by Eric Hanushek. This researcher found that effects of class size on student achievement were insignificant in 74% of the studies examined. The Minister did not elaborate further on the study but I did some research and discovered Mr. Hanushek has had many critics. A Policy Perspectives report, entitled "What Research Says About Small Classes and Their Effects", written in 2002 by Bruce Biddle and David Berliner, has pointed out that many of the supposed class-size studies cited in Hanushek reviews do not examine class size directly but rather a proxy measure presumed to represent it, namely, the student-teacher ratio.

Class size is vital. The Minister makes the point that the quality of teaching is as important, if not more so. I agree with him, but if he did his research properly, he would discover that most researchers state in their literature that class size is crucial in a child's early years. They state small classes have a considerable impact that features for some considerable time. Even if children end up in larger classes later on, they still benefit from having been in smaller classes in the first, second, third or fourth years of primary school. Research has shown that class size affects the amount of time one spends in school and one's longevity. Evidence shows good education improves people's health and well-being. By increasing the class sizes of younger children, the Minister is doing an awful lot of harm that will have to be paid for in the future. I ask him to reconsider his decision and not rely on one or two research projects. I refer him to the student teacher achievement ratio, STAR, project in Tennessee, which was carried out over quite some time. He should examine this and take his evidence therefrom when forming policy. Let us have a proper debate on class size and education.

What has the Minister done in his budget to improve the quality of teaching in our schools? He has got rid of the early retirement scheme. If a teacher who is burnt out, tired and ageing wants to retire, he or she cannot do so. The Minister now requires him or her to stay in the classroom with the small children until he or she reaches retirement age instead of facilitating him or her to leave to allow a young teacher, fresh from teacher training college, to take over. I fail to see how this decision helps. As I stated, the cuts have not been thought out or examined properly.

The free books scheme has been hit, so to speak, as has Traveller education. How can any Minister justify this? Language support teachers have been hit, so to speak, and some principals told me they may not be able to open their schools next January because of the substitution decision. If a teacher rings in sick on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning, the principal may not have anyone to cover his or her class. This is bad enough in primary schools where one can divide up the children, but at second level, where there are specialist classes, it is not so easy. It will cause chaos in schools. Principals are already stressed and this measure will make circumstances infinitely worse. It is a direct attack on the education system.

The Minister for Education and Science has been praised for the steadfast manner in which he defended the education cuts, as if this were some kind of virtue. This would be fine if there were positive and beneficial education cuts. They are the opposite. The Minister is defending education cuts which are damaging, negative and detrimental and he should not be praised by anybody for that. I challenge people to examine the implementation and effects of these cuts. They will cause a great amount of harm.

I wish to move to other issues. The Disability Federation contacted my party and I know it has contacted other Deputies. It is concerned about the reduction in its budget and maintains that a 1% cut in funding to disability services comes in addition to a 1% cut imposed by the Health Service Executive this year after efficiency savings were made. We see again that people with disabilities are affected and are hit. I already alluded to the attempt by the Government to make changes in the disability allowance. That was rowed back under pressure. Fine Gael was about to put forward a motion on the issue in the House and it is probable that the Government got wind of this and changed its strategy at the 11th hour. It did the right thing there by making the change but did the wrong thing by introducing it in the first place. I worry about the mindset of people who saw this and tried to change it.

There are also issues concerning the national disability strategy, the funding for it and where the funding goes. There does not appear to be any mechanism of tracking that funding in order to make sure it ends up where it is supposed to. That is something we must examine.

A number of years ago, when he was Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Noel Dempsey piloted the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act, a major part of national disability strategy, through this House. We were promised it would be completed by 2010. The Act dealt with education for persons with special educational needs and children with disabilities in the classroom but yet again this Government, which lauds itself for protecting the vulnerable, has decided to cut funding. It left in place all its Ministers of State but decided to attack children with disabilities in the classroom. As if they did not have enough to worry about, parents across the country are now worried about this. The Act was progressive legislation at the time and I am disappointed the Government has decided to attack it and to stop funding.

Another relevant matter is the decision by Government to subsume the Combat Poverty agency into the Office of Social Inclusion. I disagree fundamentally with this. I know there have been a number of reports on the agency's future and perhaps we should do something with it. However, perhaps it would be better if Combat Poverty were to be subsumed into the National Economic and Social Development Office where it might still put forward an independent critique of poverty in this country. Now more than ever we need an independent voice that can research and report on the extent and effect of poverty on people. My fear is that if Combat Poverty is taken under the Office of Social Inclusion it will disappear. We would then no longer have an independent voice to report scientifically on poverty and that would be a retrograde step because all governments should have such a voice. I put it to the Government that this action will get rid of that voice.

We must examine the attack made on the budget for youth affairs which is of particular interest to me. The grant-in-aid for general expenses for youth organisations has been cut by 10%. It is part-funded by the national lottery and has been cut at a time when we must support young people in the communities out of school. If we cut that budget youth clubs and organisations and youth cafes will all be hit. There have been reports in the past few days about the drug issue in the country and how serious it is. The drugs initiative and young people facilities and services fund has also been cut, by 5%. Instead of adding to these funds and investing in the future, in youth and education, we are to cut back on them, in particular on these organisations which are already run on a shoestring and can barely survive. Any cut, even a small one, can have a considerable impact. I ask the Government to take a look at this and bring forward a proper policy on youth issues. It does not have one although it has a Minister of State for youth affairs.

My final point concerns decentralisation, another example of something that was cobbled together at the last minute on the back of an envelope. In Youghal in County Cork decentralisation was ready to roll but has been stopped. Deputy O'Keeffe mentioned agriculture and there have been many debates in the House with Deputy Creed and others on the impact of the budget on agriculture. Young people have again been hit by the cut in installation aid and this has turned them away from agriculture.

Overall, not been much thought was given to this budget. I hope a debate in the House will inform Ministers, officials and others and perhaps encourage them to look at issues again. This should have been done initially, as I suggested last July. We should have had a proper debate when we knew things were going wrong but the Government could not wait to get out of the gap last July. It waited and waited and I am afraid the horse has bolted.

See this speech in context