Michelle Mulherin (Mayo, Fine Gael)

Exactly. That is a good point. Small schools can be rural or urban. There is something of a divide. Parents are concerned about changes and the information they are getting. There are certain interpretations of the fact of an increase in the pupil teacher ratio which are incorrect and advert to a bad scenario of a school closing. This is not what the Minister proposes. I wish to speak to the genuine fears people have for their children in primary school and to the future for rural or small schools. Predominately, small schools are in rural areas.

I wish to put paid to the myth that there is a great urban rural divide. I went to a rural school and I live in a town. If the Minister came to my town he would realise we are only a stone's throw from being rural. The distinction is false. The idea that small schools are being picked on and large schools have it easy or that larger schools or urban areas are more favoured is questionable. The benefit of being in this position is that I can hear all sides of the story and get information from the Department.

All schools have one thing in common: they face the same challenges. Let us consider the larger schools with more than four teachers. Such schools may have 30 students in a class. The teachers involved will explain that some of their students are unable to speak English. Nevertheless, they must try to control 30 students or more. There are more social problems in urban areas and larger schools.

I am not necessarily talking about disadvantage, but we have more social problems because we have become more sophisticated and urbanised.

On the other hand, there are the smaller schools, which must always battle on economies of scale, where a teacher might have several classes in one classroom. I am a product of that environment and have that experience. Whichever sort of school parents send their children to, they all say we have an excellent education system. We have and we must begin with that. In that context, we must make a proportionate response to the fact that the pupil teacher ratio is increasing for small schools. This is not the end of the world for them. That is only the interpretation of some people who try to make out that rural Ireland is being picked on. If that was the case, I would not stand for it.

We must look at this in the context that the Minister must make cuts. We are in a situation where the IMF is involved and because of that, our hands are financially tied and we are constrained. The Minister's recent decision that 235 DEIS teaching posts, which were to be axed, will be retained has been welcomed generally. However, when we examine that decision to discover from where the Minister is getting the money, we see he has to cut the capitation grant. Therefore, the capitation grant is being cut by 3.5% rather than 2%. Now, some parents from larger schools have e-mailed me to say that now the decision has been made to retain the DEIS teachers, the capitation grant for their children in larger schools has reduced and they are not happy about it.

We see it all, hear it all and try to make fair decisions. We should also look at this in another context. A few years ago, the pupil-teacher ratio in larger schools increased. Therefore, these schools have seen a tranche of cutbacks. In the next six years we expect to have approximately 70,000 new students in our primary and secondary schools. We must cater for these students, but we have to do that on less money. Some 92% of the budget for primary schools goes on teachers' salaries, increments and pensions. This leaves little room to manoeuvre with the budget to cover the running costs of schools. This is down to binding commitments and the Croke Park agreement.

This is the background to increasing the pupil-teacher ratio. Currently, in primary schools we have from a ratio of 6:1 in some schools to 30:1 in larger schools. Over ten years ago, a small school had to have 28 pupils before it got a second teacher. That did not result in the wholesale closure of smaller schools. However, if I look around my area, which is a rural area, I see evidence of small schools that have closed down over the past century. These monuments of old schools exist because the populations are not there to sustain them. This is the reality of rural Ireland.

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