Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have had a lifelong involvement and interest in further education and have served on the boards of management of a variety of colleges of further education in my native city of Cork. I was also the education Minister who introduced the first student grants system for students at colleges of further education and initiated the first major capital investment programme in the colleges. The results have had a significant impact on learners. One of the great lessons of the past 14 years is that we did succeed in transforming the education system to create pathways for people, irrespective of background, to be given a second chance.

The Government’s problem is that it is seeking underhand and sneaky ways to implement cuts. It is picking out sectors so as to avoid adopting a more generic approach to the system and hoping it will get away with it. Hence, we see a two point increase in the pupil-teacher ratio for colleges of further education. This is unprecedented in its scale and I have never before witnessed such an increase in one year. The impact on colleges of further education will be dramatic. One cannot apply the pupil-teacher model for primary and secondary schools to colleges of further education. It is not just about increasing class size but also removing specialist teachers in a variety of courses.

The sector is synonymous with innovation and diversity, with courses ranging from cloud computing to animal husbandry, music management to dance, as well as animation so celebrated in Hollywood with the success of Ballyfermot Senior College. All of these courses require specialist involvement and recruiting people for a period of six hours to teach a particular module. Those teachers with security of tenure will not lose their jobs. In essence, however, the Government is pulling the temporary specialists providing short-term courses out of the system.

By doing this, the Minister is reducing and eliminating courses. In many of these colleges if there were 50 places on two given courses the number will be reduced to 22 because of this decision. The Minister is removing choice and opportunity for people who need it.

Another key strength of the sector has been its connectivity with the marketplace, industry and the place of work.

It is ironic. We realise that the situation is difficult but the troika has pointed out time and again that individual spending and tax decisions remain at the discretion of the Government. Therefore, the Government has choices and that is important to remember. The Government has issued statements to the effect that it has reviewed every area of spending and that it has developed a strategically visionary approach to spending. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, was at it again this morning saying the same thing. We know that the reality is different from the rhetoric. There was a jobs budget. What did the Government state at the launch of the jobs budget more than one and a half years ago? It stated that further education and training were the core of its plan to revive the economy. Last year the Taoiseach made a presentation to European leaders recommending that they follow his approach to further education and training. Then, when it came to the budget, the Government cuts the legs from under one of the most important sectors in further education and training which has provided thousands of places throughout the years and thousands of opportunities and placements.

In the European Parliament yesterday the Taoiseach said that the fight against youth unemployment was his absolute priority. For people watching, including students in these colleges, this is why politics is like something in a foreign land. They read these statements but they must live with the reality they are experiencing, which is that there will not be places for them next September in some of these courses, because they will be eliminated. The decision the Government has taken on colleges of further education makes a mockery of the language the Taoiseach used in the European Parliament yesterday.

Independent international evaluations have been carried out and have repeatedly shown that this sector delivers for individuals, society and our economy. I was pleased when I read a report recently outlining a 90% completion rate at second level because of the policies we had introduced since 1998, including the school completion programme and provisions in other programmes. These programmes drive social mobility. The one chance we have to come out of this crisis is to protect education and ensure that it can continue to deliver progression and social mobility in the country at the level of the individual learner, collectively and for society as well. That is our way out of the crisis.

It is extraordinary for the Government to have taken this decision. Let us consider the decision in the context of the jobs initiative, the alleged commitment to job creation and the chronic unemployment situation. There is a special Cabinet meeting today at which Ministers will be asked to bring forward proposals on unemployment. It makes no sense. What will the Minister for Education and Skills bring forward today? What will he say to the Cabinet? Will he say that the Department is cutting several thousand places from colleges of further education because he believes the sector has no relationship to jobs? It is a joke. There is no coherence or strategy whatsoever.

What is more difficult to comprehend is not only that the Government is cutting the courses and places but it is cutting the financial incentives that we have had in place for more than a generation to encourage people back into education, including the back-to-education allowance, the vocational training opportunities scheme, VTOS, and a range of measures that have helped people and provided a financial underpinning for them to get back into education. The Government has cut these at the same time that it has cut places in colleges of further education. Up to 500 teachers will go as a result. Teachers have been impacted, colleges will be impacted as will their capacity to be innovative and to provide diversity of courses, but above all this decision will impact on the learner, the person who seeks to get on in life, who may have had challenges but who may wish to go back to education for a second chance, or who may not have attained the points to get into an institute of technology or a university this time around but who has a pathway through the colleges of further education to get there at some stage. We have cut off the opportunity for these learners. Shame on the Government for targeting in a selective way this sector of education to deliver savings to the Minister which he could have secured elsewhere, especially in terms of a universal charge increase as recommended by other parties in the House including the Labour Party, although it did not have the bottle to follow it through.

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