Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

The Minister should make a more honest and decent analysis of that. One does not cut between five and eight teaches in a DEIS school and terminate the entire guidance counselling service and use part of the money for another initiative that will get PR headlines. If the Minister is to do what he ought to, he should concentrate on protecting the areas that are working and that have been seen to work, not according to my observations but according to independent analysis and evaluation.

When applied to many other areas, this cut is merely petty. When it affects education services that have been in place for years and have been relied upon by schools, teachers, parents, pupils and communities, it is much worse. There is still time for the cut to be reversed. The Minister has already admitted this was a budget put together by people who are not on top of their game. The Government has four years left and a majority that can survive even the current rate of backbench losses. It should do the decent thing and do what the Minister called the termination of counselling and guidance provision. If the Minister pushes ahead with his plan and takes the 700 posts from our schools, he will be doing a great and long-lasting disservice to our education system. This will not be forgotten. The Minister may talk of having to take tough decisions but people will remember that they were wrong, unfair and did immense and unavoidable damage to schools and hundreds of thousands of people. I have a simple plea for the Minister: he should do the right thing.

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