Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)

I am glad to have this opportunity to speak on education and the future of our education system. With few exceptions, we have built up a very good education system over many years. Decisions made by various governments have contributed enormously to it. One should consider the 1950s, one of the very difficult decades for this country during which the vocational educational sector was established and rolled out throughout the country, to ensure that in difficult times we do not lose sight of the necessity for education and its importance.

I raise the issue of rural schools, the value for money of schools with fewer than 50 pupils and the emphasis on centralising not only in education but throughout the spectrum. There is a notion that we should centralise everything irrespective of the consequences for communities. Decisions to centralise in all sectors of society have not done society, the Irish countryside or the State any good. We must consider the overall context and while we realise that money must be saved throughout the spectrum and that money will have to be found to ensure we balance the books in the coming years, we must look at the long-term consequences.

In recent years there has been a continuous attempt to centralise everything, which started with the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, local authorities and groups such as An Taisce stating that it was no longer possible or sustainable in a development plan to have one-off housing in the countryside, that we should all live in cities, towns or large villages, and that it was necessary to follow this policy from the top to the very bottom. We have seen the disastrous consequences of this.

In the late 1960s there was an attempt to centralise and remove clusters of schools from small communities and take the life and soul from those once vibrant communities, which had the basic infrastructure people need in a community around which people can build. If one examines small communities, not only in rural settings but in urban settings, which build around a nucleus such as a school, one sees that by and large they are free of social problems.

We are left with the legacy of decisions taken in the 1960s to build huge apartment blocks on the fringes of cities, not only with regard to education but also with regard to social services, justice, the Garda Síochána and health services. We do not look back and evaluate the decisions taken at that time or the decisions taken on areas of huge growth and spatial strategies, which left out the tiny hamlets. Those tiny hamlets have stood society exceptionally well. This is not only the case in Ireland. We have seen the disastrous consequences for the English countryside of the policies pursued there, and if we are to be serious about learning from the mistakes of the past, particularly the past seven or eight years, we have to look at all aspects and not only one specific aspect and reverse the policies and decisions taken.

With regard to decisions on closed school routes, many boundary changes and catchment areas, particularly with regard to primary schools and in some instances post-primary schools, were put in place in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the last major drive for rural schools was in place. Approximately six years ago, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education and Science attempted to conduct a review of all of the boundaries. It asked for submissions, which were received prior to the 2007 election, but they were not pursued subsequently. The boundary catchment areas for national and primary schools need to be examined because society has changed much since the rules were put in place.

If any decisions are made by the Department of Education and Skills with regard to smaller schools they should not leave legacy issues down the line. These communities do not cost society as much as the large urban centres which we as a nation, and the world, have strived to create with disastrous consequences.

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