Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

They will be introduced. I cannot possibly comment on all topics.

It could not have been anticipated that there would be 1,800 teachers teaching only English in our schools. If all of those teachers had been deployed to reduce class sizes there would be approximately 15 children in a class but we had to prioritise. If all the teachers dealing with children with special needs had been deployed to reduce class size the same would be true. These were our priorities and continue to be. Guidelines have been issued to help the integration of young people in primary and post-primary schools. All of our information is published in a variety of languages. Assessment kits for learning have been distributed to the schools. There are however cultural differences. That is why I take the point about the importance of ensuring that the families and parents have English too so that they can understand what is happening within the schools. They are participating, particularly in Dublin, in many adult education courses.

Our schools depend on leadership and good teaching but in recent months the boards of management in primary schools have changed. One of the greatest contributions to civic society is the voluntary activity on boards of management throughout the country. I thank all the people who give their time and expertise to their local schools. We could not possibly manage the 4,000 schools in the country, over 3,200 of which are primary schools, without that voluntary commitment. I appreciate the way in which these people willingly offer their services.

The leaving certificate is an objective independent examination. It would not be possible to run it twice a year. It costs approximately €64 million to run and the fees come to approximately €8 million. It starts at Easter with the oral and practical exams, proceeds to the written exams in June and the results come out in the middle of August. There is an appeals system and appeals on the appeals which do not end until October. It is a long process involving approximately 100,000 students, plus the supervisors, correcters, etc. It is a fair system and we are gradually ensuring that there is a second assessment point in several subjects, whether by way of oral or practical exams.

The points system is also objective. The pressure people put on students to get grinds is unnecessary when one realises that this year one could get into an arts course on 346 points. It is a valuable course, which I did, as I am sure did many Senators. One can get into a science course on 338 points, and business and commerce on 427 points. One can enter an undergraduate honours degree course in the Dublin Institute of Technology on 210 points. There is something available for everbody.

There has been significant pressure on medical courses but we have made good progress and I hope that we will have a combination of points and an aptitude test for entry to these courses to ensure that we recruit people who have the necessary skills to do medicine and not those who drift in because they know they will get 600 points. I must keep repeating that there will be no interview because there is a view abroad that there will be. Ireland is too small for interviews which would become a question of who knew whom, and whose father or mother was a doctor. That cannot be part of the process. I am grateful for the co-operation of the universities in trying to implement this new system to whose early introduction I look forward.

I apologise for taking up so much time but there is a great deal that I could say on this subject. Suffice it to say that we will tackle as many as possible of the challenges facing education, within the framework of the budget. The programme for Government, the national development plan and Towards 2016 are conditional on the budget and I must fit into that framework too. I am planning on the basis that 100,000 extra children will enter our schools. To provide the same service for extra children will cost a great deal more, which restricts the amount of additional or new projects I can undertake in the immediate future. If we can continue to do for more people the good work we are doing at the moment we will maintain a strong education system of which we can all be justifiably proud, recognising challenges but that will create the type of confident society we all want.