Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)

There is an argument that €15 million is a paltry amount but it is not. This echoes the comments of a former Minister, Noel Dempsey, not long after the e-voting debacle when he described €60 million as not a lot of money either.

A third of all public sector employees in this State work in the education sector, so it has never been possible to completely exempt staffing levels in education from the Government's need to reduce expenditure. We should bear in mind that we achieved savings this year of approximately €76 million and we must do the same next year, with approximately €100 million the year after. By the end of this process of us getting our finances back on track, every savings option available to us will be fully explored and utilised.

We must cope with 70,000 new children coming into our system and I am thankful for the great news of our increasing population. I was in another country recently which is facing the opposite challenge, and it must look to import workers from abroad. In the first quarter of last year we had the highest birth rate since records began in the 1960s. Nevertheless, we must face the challenge of finding schools for 70,000 new children in the system and creating teaching posts to fill them.

Despite demographic and financial pressures, the Government has shielded, to the greatest extent possible, front line services in schools. There has been no increase of the mainstream staffing schedule general average of 28:1 for the allocation of classroom teachers at primary level. We have protected and maintained the overall number of special needs assistants and resource teachers at current levels. We would prefer not to have to reduce teacher numbers at all but it is clear that we have, as best we can, shielded front line services in schools at a time when the Government is seeking to make significant reductions in public sector numbers in other areas.

On prioritising the disadvantaged, the Government will continue to target supports for schools with the most concentrated levels of educational disadvantage through DEIS over and above other schools. Approximately €700 million continues to be provided for tackling educational disadvantage across the education spectrum from pre-school to further and higher education, which includes schemes such as school completion programme and the disadvantaged youth programme, now under the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, and the school meals programme, which is under the Department of Social Protection. DEIS post-primary schools will be targeted for additional support through an improved staffing schedule of 18.25:1, which is a 0.75 point improvement compared to the existing standard of 19:1 that applies in post-primary schools that do not charge fees, or compared to the 21:1 ratio that will apply as a result of the budgetary change in fee-charging schools.

The DEIS action plan, implemented in 2005, represented a significant advance in dealing with educational disadvantage as it was the first comprehensive initiative in this area developed by drawing, in a co-ordinated fashion, on appropriate data sources to provide indicators of disadvantage which provided the basis for the identification of schools for inclusion in a suite of integrated supports under the programme. The Department provides enhanced staffing levels to the DEIS band 1 schools that are aimed at ensuring they operate to lower class sizes and it seems to get lost sometimes in the debate that they will always continue to have this enhanced staffing level.

The Minister announced in the House in January that the Department is to report to him on the impact of the specific budget measure to withdraw legacy posts under some older schemes on DEIS band 1 and band 2 primary schools. This report is nearing completion and the Minister will then consider it in the context of the staffing allocations due to issue to all schools. He has also made clear to the House that any changes made will have to be compensated for by alternative reductions in expenditure on primary education. This highlights that there are no easy solutions and savings which may be rowed back must be found in other parts of the education budget. The Minister is also anxious to ensure that whatever emerges from the report will be implemented on a systematic and transparent basis across the schools concerned.

With regard to small schools, an argument has been put forward that the people making these decisions around the Cabinet table have no knowledge of what it is like to live and be educated in rural Ireland but nothing could be further from the truth. The Taoiseach attended and taught in a small rural school, as did the Tánaiste and I. I attended a two-teacher rural school in a place called Kiltullagh in County Galway. My mother taught in that school for 42 years and there were 47 or 48 pupils between the two teachers. My mother taught across four different class settings and I would argue she did a very good job, as would most of my student colleagues. There is much to be said for the unique educational experience one can gain from a multi-classroom environment, and there is very interesting research in this respect showing that older students can share in the teaching process and in imparting knowledge to younger student colleagues.

We are not setting out to close rural schools and I do not know how many times I must say that these measures will not result in the closure of rural schools. There will be no forced amalgamation of rural schools and any amalgamation will come at the behest and with the agreement of the local community. It is important to be clear that the only change for small schools is that average class sizes will no longer be as advantageous as they have been in the past due to the phased increases in the pupil thresholds in the staffing schedule. Senator Healy Eames spoke earlier about Leenane national school and said there were 18 or 19 pupils in the school, so two teachers teaching nine children each is not a fair or valuable use of a resource that is expensive to provide. It is expensive to train and pay our teachers. The current pupil-teacher ratio dictates a teacher standing in front of six pupils, which is still possible in a two-teacher school but it is not a good use of that valuable and scarce resource.