Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On the commitments to education in the programme for Government, there is a €675 million increase in the budget for education for 2019 compared with 2018. It turns out that €147 million of that is for pensions and another undisclosed amount is to deal with demographic changes. Every year for the past number of years a Supplementary Estimate to deal with substantial pension costs has been added on to the education Estimate because the Department of Education and Skills does not know how many teachers will retire. This relates to the question put by Deputy Catherine Martin. It is an issue we have raised on numerous occasions. This year, approximately 2,000 teachers will retire when the Department of Education and Skills had predicted that approximately 700 teachers would retire. What is the Government proposing to do about that in the context of the programme for Government? The Department appears to be the only big-spending Department whose share of overall Government expenditure is decreasing. The share for the Departments of Health, Housing, Planning and Local Government, and, rightly, Employment Affairs and Social Protection has increased but the share for the Department of Education and Skills has decreased. That shows a lack of commitment to this issue.

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