Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Any further education cuts are completely inexcusable. It is not just that we cannot and should not cut any further, we should urgently reverse the cuts that have been made to the education budget which amount to €170 million over the last two years. The Minister should reverse them and increase the amount of money we spend on education. Anything less than an increase in education funding is a cut anyway, because there are 10,000 extra new pupils joining the education system every year. Even standing still represents a very significant cut, but to cut against a background in which there is a greater demand on the education system amounts to slaughtering the quality of our education.

It makes a joke of the curriculum, which is supposed to be child centred. The phrase we use is "child centred education". How can one have child centred education in classes of more than 30 pupils? Over one quarter of schools in the country have classes of more than 30 pupils. One cannot have child centred education in that situation; it is simply not possible. Add to that the mainstreaming of special needs children who do not have as much support as previously. That is very bad for them and also makes the class much more difficult to manage. There are also the cuts in capitation grants to schools, while parents who are hit with either unemployment and virtually no income or significant cuts in their income must pay for school books, uniforms and so forth. Parents have less money to pay for that and schools have fewer resources to support families who might have financial difficulty. It is bad all around.

There is a way to increase education funding, by taxing wealth and corporate profits. Even the multinationals who are investing in this country and understand the importance of an educated workforce could see the logic of them paying a little extra tax so we can educate our young people to be in a position to work in the high tech industries which the Minister talks so much about promoting.

See this speech in context