Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

I respectfully suggest to the Minister before he proceeds with the implementation of this cut that it is necessary and appropriate to visit the small schools, the gaelscoileanna and the faith-based schools to see what his cut will do to these schools, their communities and the teachers and pupils in them. If it is not appropriate to visit such a school now when is it appropriate? He can visit small schools, like the one-teacher school in Glenmore just outside Ballina which is the Irish representative in a European-wide IT scheme. This is the school he would try to dismiss. Due to the investment of parents and the teacher in information technology this school did not lose any school days last year during the snow because the children were connected to the school through the technology.

That is the kind of thinking and innovation this country needs to get us moving again. We have that thinking, that innovation and that passion for learning in small schools across this island, in our gaelscoileanna. This cut will completely pull the ground from under that. How will we get this country moving again if we ruin the roots of recovery by doing this?

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