Dan Boyle (Green Party)

While I understand much of what this evening's Private Members' motion is trying to achieve, I feel that Fine Gael has adopted too much of a scattergun approach. The wording of the motion does not make it clear whether Fine Gael's primary concern is the size of the capitation fee, the level of infrastructural spending on school buildings or the extent of additional expenditure on IT matters. The motion does not seem to be concerned about whether Ireland's investment in education, particularly primary education, delivers the best bang for its buck in terms of the quality of education young people receive. I would have thought that would have been the starting point for any debate on primary education. I accept that many of the other issues raised in the motion need to be tackled as they are causing difficulties. We should accept that the quality of education in this country is very high despite those difficulties. We should acknowledge those who help us to provide such a high standard of education.

I wish to speak about some of the individual matters that are itemised in the motion. Some of the wording used in the motion is unfortunate and unnecessarily political. The reference to Ireland's supposedly "Third World standard of ICT infrastructure" is——