Seanad debates

Wednesday, 9 October 2002

I thank the Fine Gael Members for putting down this motion. It is clear from their contributions so far that they need to be brought up to date on what is happening in education because they are misinformed. Senator Burke mentioned my spin doctors. They are obviously not doing a good job since he managed to get everything so wrong. As Senator Fitzgerald pointed out, there are no cutbacks in education. There is no withdrawal of services, no course that was due to take place has been withdrawn, no teacher has been sacked, no pupil has been removed from a school and no disadvantage scheme has been cut in any way. Adjustments, as happen during the course of any year, have been made. Nobody would want me to leave money sitting in the education budget unspent or to hand it back to the Minister for Finance at the end of the year. I intend to spend every cent that was allocated to the education budget before the end of the year. I will not leave money lying around, particularly money that is going towards tackling disadvantage.

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