Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Labour)

It can also be said with some justification that the current Minister for Finance and the Irish people face a greater challenge in many respects than that faced by the first Minister for Finance in this country. I am sure that the thinking and listening Minister for Education and Skills would have wished for better times. His vision for education could have been realised in full, but none of us gets to choose the times we live in or the external challenge we must face. Instead, we must face the test that time presents us with, using courage, honesty and a calm rational approach. We should not engage in empty rhetoric on the rural schools issue.

The education budget, which represents around 17% of current Government expenditure, is a significant proportion of our revenue. To put it in context, at over €8 billion, it is the equivalent of under half the gap between current Government expenditure and revenue. Over the course of the next three years, we will see posts lost in rural schools. I welcome Deputy McConalogue's conversion to the protection of both education and health. In the last year of the Fianna Fáil Government, it had dismissed more HSE staff than will be lost through attrition in the next five years in rural schools. In its last year in government, Fianna Fáil fired 500 health workers in HSE west.

See this speech in context