Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)

This is a budget in excess of €9 million that has, incredibly, left people worse off. It contains broken election promise after broken election promise. I will focus my comments on the education and youth sector. People can rightly see through Government spin and that was well captured on the "Prime Time" programme last night. We heard a grandparent from Coolock talking about his grandkids who were all planning to leave this country because they did not see a future for themselves. That is are our youth. We also saw a secondary school teacher and a SNA who could not buy their own home, provide for their own future or plan for more children. They too were looking at emigrating. That is the real implication of this budget. The Minister mentioned €8 million extra for the youth sector. This is the same allocation as there was last year and will not take account of inflation. In education, this budget fails to address the fundamental challenges. In truth, next year will be worse than this year because of this budget, and this year was bad.

There is a welcome increase in capitation but it is not enough. It is not what school leaders or unions had asked for and it is not what Sinn Féin and others had committed. The sum total impact of it will be that schools right across the country will continue to have to look for voluntary contributions, raffles, bake sales and other fundraising measures to keep the lights on. There was a promise to deliver more permanent cost savings in insurance and energy by the Minister. That has not materialised. There is a similar broken promise as regards reducing class sizes. More than 43,000 Irish pupils are in classes of 30 or more. The EU average is 22.5. The general secretary of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, INTO, said recently that Ireland was completely out of kilter with the rest of Europe and was at the top of the league of shame. We will continue to be at the top of that league of shame thanks to this Government.

There is a welcome commitment regarding DEIS and DEIS+ but we need to see those plans and we need to see them implemented. There are significant concerns about retention and absenteeism. Regarding the recruitment of teachers, affordable housing is simply non-existent. I mentioned that prime example from last night "Prime Time". When is the Minister ever going to introduce the timebound provision to allow people who qualified abroad and in the North to work here? Therapies in special schools are due to have started now. Judging by this budget, it looks as though there is a further delay.

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