Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I agree with everything the Deputy has said. Anyone who was born and raised in Ireland will recognise the importance of education in the progress this country has made. Irish parents, like the country as a whole, have always emphasised the importance of education. For that reason, we have no choice other than to introduce the same key principle to our overseas development aid programme. Between 10% and 12% of our overseas aid is spent on education. I am sure education will remain a key principle when the review of the White Paper has been completed. We recognise it as a fundamental right and we will continue to do so. Ireland's expenditure on education as part of overseas development is well above the OECD average. I accept that 61 million young people around the world do not go to school. At least three times as many young people are getting a poor quality of education. Given that difficulties are encountered by many people when they try to go to school, particularly girls, we are concentrating on gender equity in education. We will increase further the number of fellowships for people from Third World countries who wish to come to Ireland to receive a high level of training and education before going back to their own countries to train people in the same way. We are also looking at how best to use the large cohort of people who retired early in February. Some 2,000 of the 8,000 people who retired from the public sector at that time had been working in the education sector. We want to see how best we can harness the information, professionalism and managerialism they have in their areas of expertise. We will try to find new ways of providing skills in countries where training and education are needed and where managerial skills might not be widely available. We are focusing on and doing a great deal. Ireland will continue to regard education as a key principle of our overseas development aid.

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