Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. I am not going to ask the Minister to debate the issues she is negotiating with the unions here in public, nor am I trying to negotiate on behalf of the union that I once headed up as president. I know she has noted that members of the unions are in the Gallery.

I want to bring a very simple scenario to the Minister. For the sake of argument, let us take Rathkeale in County Limerick, where if children do not want to go to the secondary school in the town they have to go to Newcastle West or into Limerick. There are teachers living in the area assessing those children. Let me give an example of a case of which I have personal experience. A teacher with four daughters is living in a village where his father runs a shop with petrol pumps and an undertakers business. The four daughters have to go through their father's English, history and Irish classes because there is no other teacher to teach those subjects. Imagine if one of those daughters gets an A. The Minister can just imagine the talk in the village, "Ah sure why would she not get an A, with the father teaching above in the school". Imagine one of the next-door neighbours gets a D. That family will not be buying petrol in the teacher's father's shop any more. They will probably look elsewhere to bury their parents because the teacher gave their child a D.

The Minister has come a great distance from where we were and I congratulate her. She has done a tremendous job, but there is one small final step that needs to be taken. The 40% that she is proposing will be administered by the teachers in the school by way of compiling portfolios, and the portfolio should then be sent out for assessment as is currently done with 14 other subjects. Science would be a good case in point. If she makes that last little step, we will have peace in our schools and everybody will get back to work.