Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I was certainly not the teacher's pet. I certainly felt picked on, shall we say, and I never got over it. My mother went on to teach her five other sons as well and she survived. Last week, Flahavan's and Keelings held an eating porridge week and the local school that won was the school in which my wife now teaches and through which my four children and six nieces have passed. That is a little small crossroads school that was threatened with closure in 1967. They put in a new school with two teachers that struggled to stay open. It now has five classrooms. It is in the middle of nowhere. Not even a shop is nearby. Where we live, on a clear night, we can see the light pollution in Dublin but it is still very remote. It has been an ongoing process. I am the son, husband, brother and brother-in-law of schoolteachers. I might not say I know a lot about teaching but I certainly hear a lot about it.

I note that several teachers have been in this Chamber this evening. Every Member of this House understands the transformative role which education and training plays in people's live. It gives individuals the opportunity to participate fully in society. It is a driver of economic growth supplying skills and cultivating innovation. It is vital to the efforts to tackle disadvantage throughout our society and underpins efforts to improve health and well-being. In short, education is critical to delivering so much of what we want to achieve as a Government, which is building a fair and prosperous society in which all our citizens can reach their full potential.

The importance the Government attaches to education is reflected in the scale of investment we are making next year. An additional €458 million has been provided to education compared with the allocation announced in last year's budget. This represents a 5% increase and a budget of more than €9.5 billion, the third largest allocation in the history of the Department of Education and Skills. This is very welcome. I take on board the observations made by members of the Opposition. We will be putting in more than 2,500 additional posts in schools throughout the country. These include additional teachers to meet demographic demand, more resource teachers and special needs assistants to support children with special educational needs, additional posts for guidance, and posts arising from enhancements to school leadership and from support for implementation of the junior cycle, which the previous Minister for Education and Skills, who is present in the Chamber, so nimbly manoeuvred into agreement. She is to be recognised for this, which was difficult. When everybody had the same motivation, it was resolved.

The budget will allow the resourcing of measures to tackle disadvantage in schools with the publication of a new action plan for educational inclusion. It will also mean the rolling out of targeted measures to increase participation of disadvantaged groups such as lone parents and Travellers in higher education. Grants will be provided to the most disadvantaged cohort of students undertaking postgraduate studies. We will invest at least €160 million extra in higher education over the next three years after a number of years where State funding declined to a degree that was becoming very serious. This is a critical investment in a sector which is central to Ireland’s economic development, especially in the context of preparing for Brexit. The schools building programme will deliver up to 20,000 places in schools throughout the country in 2017. These projects will support around 8,000 construction related jobs.

Overall, these measures form a balanced and coherent package which will allow the Government to implement the first phase of the Action Plan for Education resulting in better learning outcomes across the system, including apprenticeships. I will certainly be watching apprenticeships because I do not believe that when a student graduates, it is all about going to third level education in the classic sense. At the end of the day, we will need people to wire and plumb houses. A trade can take somebody around the world and back and they will certainly find something to do anywhere they go on the planet. I do not think we should ever lose sight of it. The new apprenticeship model that is being rolled out over 20 different disciplines is the model for the future. From the feedback from the development phase, we can see that the old model was not going to work and deliver the quality and quantity of skills that are necessary in a modern society.

There are, of course, many other things we could discuss that need to be done in future budgets, but budget 2017 is just the first step for the Government in reinvesting in our education system. As the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan, said, we dispute the claim in the Labour Party motion that any of the elements of our budget 2017 will not be delivered. I do not believe the intention is to not to deliver on anything. We intend to deliver on all the commitments in the programme for Government and the confidence and supply arrangement in the area of education and training as resources allow in the coming years.

I commend the amendment to the House. In the new era we have in the Houses, I think people will work together through the committee system with the Ministers of the day to try to deal with roadblocks in the system. I believe the intention here is to provide the world's leading education to young people. We are in a very good position. In spite of all its faults, we have a reputation for a highly educated and highly skilled workforce that is articulate and educated and that can travel anywhere in the world with the education it receives in this country.

The bigger challenges are to get the cohorts of people who cannot get into second or third level or skills training into the system, move people from leaving school at an early age and ensure the environment and supports exist to see these children, students and young adults to finish their training and education, which may not always be mainstream, so they are equipped when they go out into the world to meet the challenges they will meet and make a positive contribution to society.

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