Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

This plan needs to invest in leadership in schools and in principals who can give better guidance to teachers so that they may have more of a role in supervision, to ensure learning outcomes are achieved. I am somewhat shocked that the plan talks about reducing teacher numbers by a combination of measures, with €24 million in savings in 2011. If the average teacher is on €50,000, which a teacher starting would not be on, it means we will lose 500 teachers from the system this year. We are talking about incredible teacher unemployment at the moment. Of the 400 graduates who came out of St. Patrick's College this year only 30 have permanent posts. We have a crisis in teacher unemployment, even as regards getting a few months teaching where they could do their probation.

Some 54 young teachers came to me in Galway about a month ago. They could get jobs abroad, but they needed to be probated here because if they come back in more than three years, they will be outside the probation period. There used to be a five-year window in which to be probated, but the Minister has just reduced it to three. This is a bad idea when there are no jobs. I took it up with the Minister who told me she did not have the inspectors. However, if one does not have enough inspectors one leaves it at five years. Otherwise one only creates a further crisis by cutting it to three years. With the stroke of a pen the Minister can make a difference in that area which would not cost money.

Despite the impression given by the Taoiseach, the Green Party leader and the Minister for Finance, students in the education system look as if they will be hit hard by this plan. I acknowledge the Greens have done their best to protect education, but third level students face a significant increase in their registration costs. Registration fees are set to rise from €1,500 to €2,000, not including the separate costs being added on by some third level institutions. This is a tax on families as well as on young people.

Members will know of parents with two or three children in third level, so this is quite a crippling cost. Somebody has to bear this cost. Does it matter that young people are taking the brunt of it? I believe it does, because the OECD has clearly indicated that while we do well in the middle range, our elite students, or the top 10%, are underperforming. We need the top 10% to do better in the maths and sciences, so that we may keep the Intel jobs and attract the Google jobs here, instead of such companies having to locate abroad.

Equally, we have a problem at the bottom end with 16% or 17%, one in six of our students, performing poorly. When I met the OECD recently, that was the advice I got. Those are the areas we need to touch on, and this is going to hit hard because the Government is talking too about putting a €200 new charge on post-leaving certificate students. They are 17 and 18 year olds who obviously did not get the leaving certificate results they needed or they would be attending college. The Government proposes to force the youth of this country to pay for the chance to make something of their lives. These students are obviously not happy with their results and are seeking a direction. I am concerned that instead of staying in school, they will decide to go on the dole, which is no future for young people. On top of this, there is also a suggested 5% cut in all capitation grants. I presume this relates to primary and second level. Again, the advice from the OECD is that there should be no cuts at preschool, primary or secondary level. This 5% cut will include adult literacy, community education, school completion programmes and Youthreach. Who are the people involved? They are the people school did not suit. They are the people who dropped out early, the one in six we are advised to protect. This is in absolute contrast to the advice of the OECD. A total of 16% of students are leaving the school system early. This cut will do nothing to reduce that number and will only exacerbate their problems in terms of literacy and life chances. All this comes in the wake of today's report on students doing poorly in English and mathematics. Implementation of these new measures in the plan will amount to the narrowing of options for students who form the generation we are hoping will work in the future to pay for our pensions.

An interesting report in one of yesterday's daily newspapers states that we are driving 100,000 young people from the campus to the dole. This figure does not include those leaving the country. We must be careful about how we handle education, which we are all agreed is the driver of growth. If we truly believe that, let us not makes cuts to education. In this regard, I am not talking about cutting inefficiencies or about standing over poor performance because I agree these must be rooted out. I am, however, talking about cutting the opportunity for growth for young people in the education system. In this regard, we need only look to the Finish experience. It was through education that Finland made its country a success, improved the living standards of its people and grew its economy. This plan is more about cutting than restructuring or doing things in a new and improved way. I suggest we should be investing in leaders and school principals, which would be cost neutral in the long run and would go a long way to counteracting the poor performances we find in the system.

I would like to touch on the area of health care.