Seanad debates

Wednesday, 8 February 2012

Investment in Education: Motion

 

6:00 pm

Photo of Marc MacSharryMarc MacSharry (Fianna Fail)

I join with others in welcoming the Minister to the House. While we are afforded many opportunities to score political points and to have a go at each other about various issues, I do not intend to use my few minutes today to do that. There are not many people in the Visitors Gallery, just as was the case last week for the motion on this issue in the Dáil, where the media refused to cover such an important issue, concerning rural schools in particular. Many teachers, parents and children throughout the country are watching this debate online.

If people want to consider the performance of the previous Government or consider various aspects of past policy, they are entitled to do that. However, I want to speak specifically on the issue facing rural communities throughout the country. I do not doubt that Senator Harte feels passionate about this issue. I read the article in The Sunday Times in which he was fighting for his local schools in the same way as Senators Byrne, O'Brien or myself will try and fight for those in our areas. However, what I will say follows on from what our Sinn Féin colleague has said. Let us forget value for money and terms like "systemic importance" that we use so often. I used such terms my self when on the Government side of the House, particularly with regard to the banks. We should focus on the most important issue.

Rather than bounce my comments off colleagues on the other side, I appeal to the Minister of State to use his good offices to ensure that the Minister for Education and Skills sees sense on this issue. What we are talking about here is about saving €15 million. What will that mean? By 2014, saving that amount will mean that the teacher can expect to have 28 students in the classroom, from junior infants up to second class, and be expected to impart a complex curriculum with authority to all of those students and to be able to say with a straight face to Government that he or she is providing an equal opportunity to all of those students. That is rubbish.

All of us will have been lobbied throughout all the constituencies on this issue and I have been attending public meetings on it as I am sure have many others. Increasingly, what comes across at these meetings, apart from the genuine concerns for children, is the concern for rural Ireland. Where in the scheme of things is rural Ireland seen as important? Are we constantly going to look at the statistics and decide because the population is higher in one place, the other part of the country no longer matters? A parent from Cloonacool in County Sligo who rang me today commented that the rural school is the last gel to keep a community together. What value do we put on that? Do Fine Gael and the Labour Party feel that the value of holding the rural community together is just €15 million? While I disagree with him on many issues, Deputy Pearse Doherty gave an analogy of our contribution to the European space programme being approximately €15 million. Senator Averil Power provided a clear outline of how savings of up to €40 million or more could be found in the context of other choices.

At a public meeting which I attended in Curry, County Sligo, at which the Minister of State, Deputy Perry, represented the Government, he vowed to fight these cuts tooth and nail. However, he voted against the motion in the Dáil last week. A senior Labour Party member, such as the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, goes to see the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, and we instantaneously get a review of the DEIS schools, but is the opinion or weight of Fine Gael Minister of State, Deputy Perry, any less in the context of the rural communities of Ireland? It seems so. If the Minister of State wants to show me the books, I will, using my relatively limited business experience as an elected Member of this House on the industrial and commercial panel for ten years, find him €15 million by 7 p.m., the end of this debate, which will allow him cut the necessary amounts of money to ensure the education budget remains intact. More than that, this will ensure the longevity and continuity of the rural communities of Ireland and, not least, maintain the building blocks in educating the children, which will contribute - as pointed out in the amendment - to the economic recovery for which the country yearns.

There is no way decent hard-working Ministers like the Minister of State sat down and presided over this cut and said it was logical. This cut is penny wise and pound foolish. Nobody with a level of human spirit, much less business acumen, could stand over this cut and say it makes sense. This is not about political point scoring. I will take the Pepsi challenge on an economic debate all day long on those issues if necessary. However, we are playing this season's game now, not last season's game and we must assess the play of the players during the current game. The Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Rabbitte, succeeded in getting a review for the DEIS schools - which I welcome - which had proposed savings of up to €70 million. The rural schools issue makes a mere €15 million in savings. For the many people living in rural Ireland and for the many people like me with young children living there who want to see their children educated in rural and regional Ireland, I ask the Minister of State to please throw us a bone. Let him go to his parliamentary party and say that the Government is getting it wrong. The €15 million can be found elsewhere. I believe, as a member of the Opposition, in the collective ability of those on the Government side to make that case. Take control of the issue. I know what it is like to have to argue on behalf of a parliamentary party when it is part of a Government. It is not easy but it is possible.

I ask those opposite to vote for this motion this evening and go back to the parliamentary party meetings to ask to find that €15 million elsewhere. It can be found. The people of Ireland will thank the Government parties collectively if they do so, and we can leave the political points scoring to other issues. For the children of rural Ireland, let common sense prevail, for God's sake.

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