Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will quickly go through the detail for each individual VEC that submitted an application for alleviation. There are 25 posts nationwide, of which ten are for the City of Dublin VEC. Five posts are for the City of Cork VEC, three for Dún Laoghaire VEC and one post each for the VECs of County Cork, County Cavan, the city of Galway, County Louth, County Wicklow, County Dublin and the city of Limerick. At the outset of this process to reduce the number of posts available, no-one denied it would have an impact. No-one believed other than this would be the case. The Government did not suggest it would not be the case and the fact it allowed this alleviation process to commence and allowed the aforementioned window of time to commence this alleviation process was a strong indication the Government believed it would have an impact.

While Deputy McConalogue is not keen to revisit history, the previous Government signed up to a memorandum of understanding with the troika, included within which was a requirement - not an aspiration but an obligation - to find €350 million of savings in the Department of Education and Skills between the years 2010 and 2014. Each one of these has had a negative impact and no one is denying that for a moment. However, the Government has attempted to minimise the impact as best it can. One reason it considered this reduction in the pupil-teacher ratio for adults - most of those accessing these courses are adults - was to minimise the impact on the young people in the education system, that is, those in primary or post-primary, and to allocate the resources in the most fair and just way possible.

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