Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the chance to contribute on this motion proposed by Fianna Fáil in Private Members' time although I do not know what to make of it. Sometimes I read these motions and get angry at them or laugh at them. However, I listened to the debate last night in which speakers were criticising the numbers in PLC courses, complaining that the pupil-teacher ratio had changed from 17:1 to 19:1. That was a bit sad. We are talking about adults who want to attend a course and are willing to sit there, to learn and listen. This is not primary school. When Deputy Dara Calleary and I were in primary school there were probably more than 40 in our class. These are adults. Surely to God it is okay to have 19 adults learning in a room. If one goes to any lecture hall or theatre there may be hundreds present to listen to a lecture. Let us cop ourselves on. We are living in different times. We do not have the money we used to have and we know where the blame for that lies - with the party opposite. We do not have the money any longer and must make changes. There have to be cuts. It is truly ridiculous to criticise an area of this kind where the pupil-teacher ratio has been slightly moved, especially given that the number of places has stayed the same and has not been reduced. During Fianna Fáil's time there was a budget cut in 2009 to grants for physics and chemistry. That is what the party decided to cut in the current climate. It also decided to cut funding for the centre for talented youth, which was very clever. Grants for home economics were abolished. There were 200 fewer primary teachers and 200 fewer secondary teachers.

They were cuts that hurt people. There was a reduction of 500 places in the back-to-education initiative. They were silly cuts if they hit the wrong areas. Let us get real. Some of these cuts were mentioned last night and today. At a time when we do not have the amount of money we had, we need to make sensible, clever changes. The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, the Minister of State, Deputy Ciarán Cannon, and their team are a reforming team. I was glad to chair the committee, with some of my colleagues, that covered education in the first year of the new Government, which saw a reforming Minister and his team come forward with new ideas to try to change the system for two reasons: because we had less money, thanks to the financial mess and the mismanagement of the previous 14 years under a previous Government - namely, Fianna Fáil and its friends - and also because the system needed reform.

FÁS was allowed to become almost an uncontrollable monster and nobody knew what was going on there. That is unfair to the good staff who wanted to do well in FÁS but could not because the system would not allow them. It was Bertie Ahern's pet project and it became an utter disaster. Apart from that, the system across the board at all levels of education must be reformed. The Minister is a long way down that road with the abolition of the FÁS brand, the emergence of SOLAS later in the year and the formation of the education and training boards. I accept that education and training boards were being discussed by the previous Government, but nothing was done. We would like the reforms to happen within a shorter timeframe, but they are on the way and will be in place before the end of the year. These reforms will benefit all those who need to retain and improve their skills.

We have also had reform in the whole approach to primary and second level schools, and common sense has been introduced. In regard to my home town of Navan, I avail of the opportunity to spell out the reform that has been undertaken by the Government. The school building project announced last year by the Minister for Education and Skills highlighted the firm commitment by the Government to reform the way it invested in primary and secondary school infrastructure on the basis of needs. This is a town that had trebled in population and had waited ten years for announcements in respect of new schools. This was the first school project built, last year, that utilised information from the Department of Social Protection to prioritise where new schools would be built. By cross-checking child benefit payment patterns within a geographical spread, the Department of Education and Skills was able to decide where the schools were most needed for the years ahead. This is a common-sense approach that led to the town of Navan finally getting its fair share of additional school places to meet the growing needs of the pupil population in a town that grew during the boom years. It had been neglected for many years by old systems that did not recognise the population explosion. Navan is getting a second level school and a brand new national school, while two or three more national schools are being assigned to permanent accommodation to fit their needs. Rightly so. That is not happening because of parochialism or somebody banging the table but because it was right. That is what the Ministers are trying to do in all areas of education and especially in the reform of the systems of further education and training - to bring forward common-sense methods that will respond to the current climate.

Deputy Dara Calleary is a member of the Joint Committee on Education and Skills. Representatives of businesses and enterprises who appear before the committee on a weekly basis say they cannot get the skills they need, despite the massive unemployment. New programmes such as the ICT strategy will close that gap. We also need to devise other strategies in this regard. I have no doubt that the new initiatives with SOLAS and the education and training boards will help us adapt our facilities and resources to match the needs of employers and the needs of future employees. We must also adapt the training provided to those who want to become entrepreneurs and start their own businesses. The same Deputy was with us on the day we heard from Discovery Zone. Sadly, we still have not managed to fit it into a certain area to find funding for it, but we must adapt our systems to allow us to fund programmes such as Discovery Zone, along with others that deal with people who have business ideas. Such people are given courses and their skills are improved to enable them open their own businesses. I am glad we have reforming Ministers. It is a bit cheeky of Fianna Fáil to whinge and cry over certain areas after its record of not reforming a system that needed to be reformed. There are many Departments that need to reform and change to take account of what is going on. It is happening, and slowly but surely we are getting there.

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