Rónán Mullen (Independent)

I listened with great interest to the Minister and to my colleagues. To some degree, we are already engaged in a debate that relates to several of the amendments I have tabled. The Minister is talking a very good talk about patrons being flexible and teachers not being so dogmatic as to refuse to be deployed from a panel into a school which may or may not be their first choice. The word to describe the happy scenario the Minister suggests is "agreement". However, this does not negate the reality that this legislation is replete with references to matters being determined by the Minister, in some cases with consultation with various bodies and in other cases with only the concurrence of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform.

It goes back to the question I posed earlier. What mischief is the Minister seeking to remedy? If he is reassuring us - I hope he is right - that agreement is likely to be reached in all of these scenarios, then why not trust the status quo? It is one thing to say to people that one expects that agreement will be reached but, at the end of the day, the decision will ultimately be the Minister's. It is easy to talk about people being reasonable and agreeing on issues when they know, and the Minister knows, what will happen if they do not agree.

It seems to me that the only situation in which there is genuine partnership is where even the legislation acknowledges the need not just for consultation but for consensus. I observed on Second Stage that the constitutional underpinning of the provision of education services in this State does not, or should not, lend itself in quite the same way to ministerial fiat in regard to these matters. It is fine when one is talking about water services and septic tanks. Important as those issues are, we are talking about education in this instance and it is important to bear in mind that the primary educators are parents. That is the constitutional underpinning for all of this. Despite the Minister's undoubted goodwill in this matter and the goodwill of all involved, I am not reassured. What I see is erosion of the idea that things must be agreed between the different stakeholders in education in favour of a more centralising notion.