Ulick Burke (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister to the House and am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. Everybody welcomes improvements in the education system, which provide children with an opportunity to improve their lot. Earlier on the Order of Business, I again raised an education issue, which is the failure of more than 1,000 children to transfer from primary to second level education annually. That will not improve overnight but whatever needs to be done to reverse that trend must be done. I have raised the issue of school drop outs on numerous occasions with the Minister and her predecessor.

The kernel of the early school leaving issue relates to the appointment of educational welfare officers. The Government gave an undertaking that the resources necessary to ensure the appointment 330 educational welfare officers would be provided on a phased basis. It was intended that the educational welfare officer system would replace the juvenile liaison scheme involving the Garda and other schemes, which were totally unacceptable. However, only 70 officers have been recruited, meaning that each officer is assigned 185 pupils. No person can monitor a child with educational difficulties over the course of his or her primary education and prevent him or her from dropping out in these circumstances. Most children play truant or drop out between the ages of nine and 12 but if the necessary personnel are not appointed, the numbers dropping out will increase significantly. These children will present further problems as they get older and it will cost the State much more to counter their activities outside the education system than it would if they were encouraged to stay in school. It is important that the proposed number of educational welfare officers be recruited, as they would provide excellent value for money. I hope the Minister will give a commitment to dramatically increase the number of such officers in the near future. The Minister has immediately shaken her head but if she does not address this issue, another Department will pay the price.

Statistics published by the Department and the Minister are, in the main, contradictory. A total of 108,619 children are in classes of more than 30 pupils. It is unfair of the Minister to repeatedly state that the problem is at local level, given that boards of management of schools are forced to shuffle resource teachers so that they deal primarily with children aged under nine, who have greater needs. That is not the solution to the problem. In addition, a significant number of pupils are in class sizes of more than 35 or more than 40. A total of 160 pupils are in the latter category, which is unacceptable.

The Minister should definitively outline what is the position regarding the larger class sizes because the figures published by the Department and the Minister are contradictory. In the school year 2004-05, 9,946 pupils were in classes that numbered between 30 and 34 pupils while in 2003-04, the equivalent figure was 4,499. The number of pupils in this category, therefore, doubled. If people welcome that——