Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil as ucht an deis seo a thabhairt dom. I am pleased to confirm to this House a €9.2 billion investment in education as a consequence of budget 2022. It is a significant investment but it is both richly appropriate and deserved by the education sector. From my experience as a teacher I know of the transformative power of education. It has power to facilitate every child and young person not just in reaching their supposed full potential but to go beyond it. There is power in education to transform families and communities.

The investment of €9.2 billion in education allows us to have significant breadth of ambition for education, meaning we can advance a number of key initiatives. Among these are the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, DEIS, programme, which will see €18 million invested in the coming year, increasing to €32 million in 2023. This will ensure the DEIS model is significantly expanded to bring in the most deserving and significantly disadvantaged schools to the programme.

In special education we have an ambitious programme of 980 special education teachers and 1,165 additional special needs assistants, SNAs, coming on stream next year. This brings the total number of SNAs to over 19,000. We have the single biggest investment ever in special education and at €2 billion it is more than 20% of the entire budget of the Department of Education, which is right.

There will be a reduction of one point in the pupil-teacher ratio from 25:1 to 24:1. This is in turn will result in an additional 350 new teaching posts being made available to our schools.

With the school building programme we are looking at an investment of €792 million, delivering more than 200 school building projects next year. There will be an additional €30 million made available for summer work schemes, bringing total investment to €65 million for the 2022 schemes. To be fair, this scheme is used expertly and judiciously within our school communities and it is worth that further investment of €30 million.

There will be an additional €30 million for the school transport scheme, bringing total investment to €270 million for the year ahead. This significantly supports more than 114,000 students.

The House is aware we have had significant investment in ICT in the past year, with over €100 million being made available to schools. In addition to this, before the year closes, an additional €50 million will be made available. In total, between last year and this year, this means investment of €150 million for ICT.

I am also pleased to confirm to the House that I have secured on a permanent footing at least one day of release for teaching principals, which is a significant move forward for such principals and an acknowledgement of their workload. Teaching principals in special schools or schools with two special education classes will now become administrative principals.

I also draw the attention of Members to a new reading book initiative worth €20 million. This investment will facilitate the purchase in schools of reading books, audiobooks, braille books, picture books or whatever is deemed appropriate by school bodies. The intention is to promote the joy in words and language and the beauty of literature. It is about inculcating in students a particular appreciation of the written word while fostering in our students the ability to become the next generation of creative writers in the world of literature.

As a member of the Government I take the last few minutes to welcome the overall budgetary package of €86.6 billion, which brings security and stability to the country after such a long period of Covid-19 challenges. This investment allows us to think in a forward way and be proactive in our action, and this comes as a result of our very successful vaccination programme, which has been bought into by all of society. The whole of the Government is now in a position to be able to think and plan for beyond a time of Covid-19. I welcome in particular measures such as investment in the childcare sector, social welfare, health and housing, which are initiatives that will have a positive impact not only in my county of Kerry but across the entire country. I refer also to measures like aviation supports for regional airports, the continuation of the wage subsidy scheme until 2022 and a targeted rates waiver in the fourth quarter of 2021 for businesses not yet fully open. This demonstrates broad ambition as we make our way forward out of Covid-19.

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