Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As it is always a mistake to prepare one's speaking notes before hearing the answer to a question, I will repeat my answer. There is a non-recurring pay cost of €127 million which must be taken into account when making the comparison between the figures for 2015 and 2016. This should be clear. The Deputy's figure is wrong, as I have explained already. We have protected education expenditure throughout the crisis. With regard to capital expenditure, we have built more schools than the previous Government did in boom times because it was a focus. We have protected the pupil-teacher ratio throughout the crisis and are improving it. As I said, we will allocate 2,260 additional teaching posts next year. This cannot be met from the sum of money about which the Deputy has spoken. We must look at once-off expenditure items which occur in a single year and will not recur before a year by year comparison is made, but, of course, the Deputy knows this.

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