Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I listened to a most heated and energetic debate at the INTO Annual Congress this year on that issue. The Minister has met representatives of the educational communities at local level who have pointed out to him how inadequate are their grants to meet the demands on them in terms of different local authority charges. I am not opposed to local authority charges in a general sense but it is quite unfair that they are used at school level. In the event of schools having to pay charges to local authorities, could they not be allowed to recoup those charges from the State? There should be no difficulty about that since it would not require a change in the law. The State should recognise the difficulty for schools and give those running primary and post-primary schools around the country money to compensate for the additional charges.