Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies for their comments. Getting the balance right is necessary. I can now visit more schools than was the case a year or two ago. I accept Deputy Finian McGrath's remarks but the practice in the past had given rise to unrealisable and unfair expectations. I wanted to break that practice and change it. I accept that teachers and school communities, as I mentioned in a comprehensive speech in CBS Naas two weeks, make an extraordinary input through the public private partnership that makes up the Irish education system, with contributions from parents and teachers who go the extra mile every day. It is not taken for granted by me or the Department. We would not be able to deliver in these straitened times without that commitment, and anything I can do to maintain and sustain that morale, I will do.

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