Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Labour)

I was recently impressed by comments from the deputy leader of Fianna Fáil at a public meeting in Ballinalsoe on the issue of rural schools. I now appreciate that the comments he made that night were well informed, based on his contribution to a Green Paper when he was first elected in 1992. Entitled "Education in a Changing World", it proposed Fianna Fáil's objective to ensure that the smallest number of teachers in a rural school would be four. That document planned to eliminate through amalgamation all one, two and three-teacher schools.

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