Paudie Coffey (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister and the debate on his very important portfolio, education. We should never underestimate the potential of education for children and adults, and I am sure the Minister does not do so. I will not quote reports but will refer to real-life experiences I have had as a pupil and a parent. I am chairperson of a board of management of a national school and am a former member of a VEC. I am sure the Minister, having been a public representative for many years, has experience in this field also. I hope he has listened to many of the points made by colleagues in the Seanad today. They reflect the reality on the ground with regard to education and educational facilities.

I am the parent of a five year old child in a class of 34. This is not the largest class in the school. There are 36 pupils in the junior infants' class, which is a disgrace in this day and age. One must acknowledge the efforts of the teaching staff and the principal who try, with their limited resources and building, to provide for the children as best they can. The Minister, having been a lecturer, will know that a class of 36 junior infants does not involve education but crowd control. It is a baby-sitting service. Teachers, when they enter a classroom of 36 infants at 9.20 a.m., should be able to give those children direct attention. Many Members have referred to the formative years between zero and six.

The pupil-teacher ratio is a disgrace. I am not just blaming the Minister but successive Governments. However, the Minister, unlike Members on this side of the House and many on the other, has an opportunity to do something about it. He has responsibility on which he can deliver.

I am disappointed with the cutbacks in primary education, which effectively reduce resources for primary schools. Boards of management and parents' associations throughout the country are fundraising voluntarily to help their schools. They depend on the Minister to invest the necessary resources in those schools.

A resource teacher in my constituency is teaching out of a staffroom, which is neither fair to the pupil she is teaching nor to herself. The school has applied to the Department for an additional classroom, or even a prefab, but the application was refused. What message is this sending to parents and pupils? We are claiming to be investing in education, yet these circumstances are arising throughout the country.

I have been a Member of this House for only a short time but I have heard numerous Adjournment debates and county and city council motions that concerned people appealing to the Department for information on their postilion regarding the schools building programme. Schools are operating out of prefabs, sometimes dilapidated and sometimes in good condition, but they do not know where they stand with regard to the programme because there is no transparency. There is no accountability with regard to the need for buildings. It is always a question of who has the best connections with the local Minister or Member of the Dáil, or who has the best connections within the Department. This is not how a Department of Education and Science should be running its business. We should have a fully transparent system such that people and schools are allocated resources based on need. Thus, all members of the public, including public representatives, could see where they stand. That this is not the case points to the abject failure of our education system.

Holy Cross school in Tramore is spending €214,000 per annum on prefabs, and that is only to rent them. It is dead money. If it were given the green light to build, for which it applied many years ago, that would not be the case. Let us make the necessary investment and create employment through the capital investment programme, about which the Minister spoke. Let us stop throwing money down the drain.

The Minister is giving his ear to the Government side but not to this side. I am stating the reality in the Waterford constituency, which is adjacent to the Minister's county, as he is well aware.