Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)

It is absolutely nauseating to listen to Members from the Government benches talking about improving quality in education when twice today parents, students and other pupils had to descend on the streets outside in defence of education. We are discussing small schools but it would be remiss of me not to mention the protest which took place today against the cuts in the numbers of special needs assistants, SNAs, and resource teaching. A family was in touch with me today whose 13 year old daughter, who has Down's syndrome, had an SNA for eight years in primary school and was doing very well in learning to write. It is criminal that she is going to secondary school and will not have an SNA to complete her education. That is the type of society our Government is advocating.

Government Deputies have showed some neck in their contributions. Deputy McNamara has said he is confused about what is going on and does not know if we are discussing legislation or a repeat of the motion discussed in the House in February. He is not sure why we are here. We are here because the issues tabled in February have still not been resolved. I am not scaremongering.

The people in the Gallery are not stupid. If the people who sent postcards are children, that does not mean they cannot comprehend what is being done to their communities and families. The problem is not that a postcard comes from a child but that the Government does not like the message the child is delivering because it highlights the betrayal by the Government. The idea that a Deputy would refer to the pupil-teacher ratio in his child's school, stating that it was 27:1, and suggest that somehow his child's welfare is being affected by the children in a rural school with a pupil-teacher ratio of 6:1 is outrageous. His child's welfare is being affected by the fact that this Government has failed to tackle the pupil-teacher ratio problem and has stood over the fact that we continue to have one of the worst pupil-teacher ratios in Europe. This is despite the promises of those in the Government before they came to power. The reason is that we have had a historically underfunded education system. Last year the Government spent 4.7% of GDP on education. This compares with the European average of 6.2%. The reality is that education is not an indulgence but an investment. The OECD and others have stated that education is more important than ever in a recessionary period. Unless the Government commits the necessary resources then all we have is a dressed-up version to hide the cutbacks the Government is implementing. The children in the Visitors Gallery and in urban areas will pay the price.

We cannot divorce this topic from the issue of the future of rural Ireland. A Deputy from Mayo stated that there has never been as much investment in rural Ireland and that county councils have never done as much in these areas. I am unsure which areas the Deputy was referring to because everyone knows that county councils are dealing with considerable cutbacks and that the rural communities are suffering decimation, emigration, unemployment, closure of post offices, which we heard of today, and closure of public houses. The school is at the cornerstone of that development. If uncertainty rests over the future of a school then the unravelling goes further. Why would one enroll a child in junior infants in a small school if one did not believe it would be there next year or the following year? It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and the future of a school can be jeopardised because it cannot get sufficient enrolment numbers. The Bill seeks to give some assurance and end some of this uncertainly by including certain conditions such as the condition that no teacher would teach more than four classes and so on.

These are necessary measures. The Government may believe that it can con people or it may refer to scaremongering but people understand that while some schools have escaped the cull this year and have managed to save their teachers because they engaged in the appeals process, there is no guarantee of what the future will hold. We should fight to put rural schools at the centre of a plan for rural regeneration and redevelopment. Earlier, I heard a good quote from a representative of the Nevin Economic Research Institute. He made the point that decisions should not be made solely on economic grounds because the social impact of decisions was vital.

We are discussing measures to protect and develop the fabric of rural Ireland. It is incredible that there are certain Deputies here from the Labour Party who, two weeks before the general election, produced a policy statement on education. They declared that the Labour Party believed in the equal right of every person regardless of family background or income to realise his or her full potential. They referred to the fact that investment in education was the most important investment we can make for our future and that it would be central to our economic recovery. They specifically stated that the Labour Party was committed to protecting children's education from the types of austerity supported by other parties. Then, the Labour Party came to power and did the opposite.

It is not that these are not austere times. We know the economic difficulties that exist in our State but the reality is that the Labour Party has chosen to put the welfare of bondholders ahead of the welfare of children. The Labour Party has chosen to put the welfare of those who earn of hundreds of thousands of euro over the right of investment in education. We know we will not win a vote on this Bill. However, because of Labour Party policy rural communities and small school communities, whether of minority religions or Gaeltacht areas, are getting up off their knees, getting organised and they will not go back into their box until their children get the type of education they deserve.

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