Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have debated three significant items of legislation. The Qualifications and Quality Assurance (Education and Training) Act, the Education and Training Boards Act and the Further Education and Training Act have huge potential in the context of transforming the education system in this State and I previously congratulated the Minister on their introduction. There are some other progressive measures which the Minister has ambitions to achieve, such as the reform of the junior cycle, the implementation of the action plan on bullying and the rolling out of the literacy and numeracy strategy. These are all laudable initiatives.

The reality, however, is that those reforms will mean nothing if the Minister continues to cut education budgets. Unless he puts in place the resources to implement those reforms, they will not happen and that will be a devastating consequence of the situation in which we find ourselves. We will squander the opportunity to implement real reform unless we match it with the resources and finance.

I do not lay all the responsibility for this at the Minister's feet. There must be collective responsibility at Cabinet level when it comes to investing in education. I do not understand the way this Government works in that the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and the Minister for Finance come to the Cabinet table a wag a finger at each Minister and say he or she must find so much in savings in his or her Department. There is no joined-up thinking at Cabinet level when it comes to the type of society, education system, health system and mental health services we want. As long as this Government continues to operate in a very departmentalised way with every Minister being told to find a certain amount in savings, we will never get on top of the real issues facing society.

The Cabinet needs to make a collective decision and say it needs to invest in our education system and that because its wants to cherish all the children of this nation equally, it will not cut our education budgets. That is the only way this will happen. It happened in the North where there was cross-party support for redirecting almost £400 million back into education. It has happened in other countries where political parties, both left and right, have come together and said that education is critical to economic recovery and, therefore, they will make a decision to protect education.

As I said last night, there are no hard or no easy decisions when it comes to education; there are right decisions or wrong decisions. Cutting education budgets is not a hard decision; it is simply the wrong decision. Investing in education, even in these difficult economic times, is not something which can be done easily but it can be done. We have shown how it can be done and we will do so again when we launch our pre-budget submission the week after next.

It is not an easy decision to invest in education but it is the right decision and we will reap the benefits for years to come. We only have to look at countries like Finland. The Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection visited Finland in February to look at the system in place there. The difference between Finland and Ireland, which have similar populations and pupil numbers, is that Finland made a decision in a time of recession to invest in education and it is reaping the benefits now. I implore the Minister to go back to Cabinet and convince his Cabinet colleagues that investment in education is well worth doing.

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