Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister's recent claim that a cut of €100 million would be within what he termed the outer reach of potential cuts to the education budget for next year will be of little comfort to parents and even less to their children. Regardless of whether it is €50 million or €100 million, an already overstretched and inadequately resourced education system is to be undermined further on the Government's watch.

I can tell the Minister what is on the minds of parents in my constituency of Dublin Central. They seek an absolute assurance that their children will get a proper educational opportunity. They seek to ascertain that the education system will be resourced properly and protected. While schools across the State have been hit hard by cuts to the budget, the challenges facing schools within disadvantaged areas such as Dublin's north inner city are particularly acute.

The Minister, Deputy Quinn, has stated that for this year, hundreds of additional resource teachers who may be required to meet extra demand for special needs students have not been budgeted for and that he will not know the scale of the problem until this month, which is just weeks before the budget announcement in October.

Education has been fundamentally damaged by this Government through the withdrawal of guidance services, teachers spending less time teaching due to extra administrative duties and the loss of classroom teachers from schools. However, in a sense this is just the tip of the iceberg. Cuts imposed by the Government, particularly in the areas of health and education, have been deep and the fallout is all around us. In my constituency, children of school-going age who require speech and language therapy must wait up to two years for that therapy. I am told by the Minister for Education and Skills that this is not a matter for him but for the Minister for Health, as the HSE delivers the service. The Minister is nodding his affirmation of that. However, this should and must be a matter for the Minister for Education and Skills. In addition, it should be a matter of real concern to him.

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