Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In fact, it was recognising the significance and importance of the achievements across all schools around the country in respect of both literacy and numeracy. The Deputy will know that the report, which was published in the last month or so, actually shows the greatest improvement in 30 years in areas such as reading and writing in schools. That is a great achievement on the part of the schools, teachers, parents and pupils. It bodes very well for future success in education.

The Government has developed an area-based child poverty approach, which has been rolled out in a number of areas across the State. In those areas, as the Deputy knows, the school completion programmes are vital in encouraging children to stay in school and parents to become involved in their children's education. I am happy to say my Department has been involved in funding this. The aim is to bring the various organisations in any one area, including the school and the school completion programme unit, together with others and with agencies dealing with children in order to ensure a holistic approach to keeping children in school and helping them to achieve the best results in terms of their development.

As the Deputy will know from the budget, this year will see the recruitment of 1,700 additional personnel into our schools, split between primary and secondary, with approximately 700 additional teachers, 800 resource teachers and approximately 300 special needs assistants. As the moratorium on hiring is becoming a thing of the past, this is one of the first areas to be targeted for significant additional resources of the kind I believe the Deputy would welcome, in terms of the 1,700 appointments which will happen this year. Also, we made an announcement last week that the Deputy may have heard regarding small schools, which significantly improves the capacity of small schools in terms of staff and, therefore, the viability of such schools.

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