Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)

I thank the Technical Group for allowing me speaking time. I also thank Deputy Luke 'Ming' Flanagan and his excellent staff for the work they have done in bringing this Bill before Dáil Éireann.

Given the importance of this debate, particularly for rural Deputies, it is disappointing that I am talking to the Minister of State and only one Deputy on the Government side. Where is everyone else? This is an extremely important issue. The network of small schools survived in horribly bad times. Last Saturday I was at a school which was celebrating the fact that it was 150 years in existence. Let us think back over the 150 years and the bad times the principals and teachers at the school saw. In times gone by children had to bring a sod of turf with them to heat the school. That was the rule. However, the children survived and received a good, sound and solid education in a safe environment near their homes. It is said the country is broke, but let us compare the Ireland of today with the country of those young children. They had no socks and shoes on their feet; they wore a pair of short raggy trousers and had a sod of turf in their hand to heat the school for the day. The Government has choices to make. We are aware of the situation it walked into when it took over. However, one of the choices it is making is to attack the education system at local level by closing small schools. Why is it doing this? What are we saving if we close a small school? We save on the electricity bill because teachers must be paid in other schools. The school I attended last Saturday in Lauragh has witnessed major investment during the years by the State and by fund-raising and holding activities throughout the year. It has a new roof and playground. Everything is perfect in it. Why would a Government which is supposed to be intelligent and smart and forward thinking close a school? Governments have made stupid mistakes. Take the time when Governments thought it was a good idea to close down the railway network. If that infrastructure could be put back today, and those trains were rolling, taking traffic from the roads and offering scenic travel for tourists, it would be a massive boost to the economy. Governments, however, thought it was the right thing to close down the railway networks, pull up the tracks and leave them abandoned and let them go to hell. That was a mistake. Now the Government wants to make the same mistake with our small schools. When they are gone, it will be impossible to open them again and everyone will then admit that it was the wrong decision.

Take the quality of teaching a young person gets in one of those schools. It is more personal and safer. The time a child is most vulnerable and impressionable is when he leaves his house on the first day and goes into a junior infants class. If he is going to a place where he knows all the other students, has grown up with them and met them at mass and sports events, where he knows the teachers and everyone lives locally, it is a lovely safe atmosphere for him to go into. If those schools are closed and amalgamated into larger schools, those lovely small children will be going into a place that will be daunting and terrifying in many cases because there will be so many other people there from different areas, people they do not know and know nothing about. That interaction is fine further on in the educational system but at a younger age it is better for them to be nearer to home. If a child goes to one of those schools and has a learning difficulty or a problem, it will be identified much quicker when there is a smaller group of children in the class.

Children are being herded into larger classes, which the Government is achieving by changing pupil-teacher ratios and the rules on school transport. That is how it is going to close the schools. No one on the Government benches will stand up and say it is going to close a particular number of schools. They are not men enough to do that. By meddling with the rules, however, the Government will close the schools by stealth. That is why I commend Deputy Luke 'Ming' Flanagan on bringing this Bill before the House, so we can debate it and people on the Government side can nail their colours to the mast. This is about a choice. Are Government Members in favour of retaining the small school networks in the country or are they not? If they are, they should vote for this Bill and if they oppose those schools and think it is okay to pursue a policy of closing them down, they should vote with the Government.

I thank the Technical Group for introducing this Bill and I compliment SOSS, Save our Small Schools, on the great work it has done organising meetings up and down the country.

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