Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)

It will be necessary in the more testing economic climate ahead for us to continue to target and prioritise our resources to maximum effect for everyone. While teacher numbers are important, numerous influential reports have highlighted the fact that teacher quality is the single most important factor — far above anything else — in improving educational outcomes for children. Ensuring high quality teaching and learning is a challenge. Dealing with factors that inhibit it, represents a challenge for the Government, the Department, school management and the teacher unions.

The Department of Education and Science will advise individual schools in the normal way on their staffing allocation. The preparatory work for this has commenced with the processing of enrolment data that have been received from schools. The staffing allocation processes, including notification to schools, will commence early in the new year. The allocation process includes appellate mechanisms under which schools can appeal against the allocation due to them under the staffing schedules.

In addition to mainstream classroom teachers, the Department also allocates teaching resources to schools for special needs and language support. The final allocation to a school is also a function of the operation of the redeployment panels, which provides for the retention of a teacher in an existing school if a new post is not available within the agreed terms of the scheme.

The Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, has no difficulty in setting out for this House or for the public generally the overall changes on aggregate teacher numbers in schools for the 2009-10 school year. The Minister will do this when the allocation processes have been completed. Furthermore, the staffing schedule will be published and it is a transparent way of ensuring that schools are treated consistently and fairly, and know where they stand.

At this time, the priority for the Department, within the resources available to it, is to carry out those processes in a timely manner. Diverting resources to create staffing profiles for the individual schools requested by the Deputy, information which at this time would only be speculative, could not be justified and would impede the process.

The Minister is confident that as the global economy improves it will be possible to build again on the significant achievements of recent years and do so in a manner consistent with overall prudent management of the economy. As the full extent of the global crisis seeps into public consciousness, the Minister believes there will be general acceptance that taking difficult decisions now to secure future economic prosperity and secure employment is the first imperative for the Government.

Once again, I thank the Deputy for providing me with the opportunity to address the House on this matter and to outline the current position in these cases.

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