Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the statement by Professor John McHale of the National University of Ireland Galway, who is also chairman of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, in which he expressed caution about the budget. The very large increase in corporation tax revenues this year may not recur. The problem in the past was that non-recurring revenues mostly associated with the construction industry became built into the system. It is important to have a divergence of views. One of the things we found at the banking inquiry is that the so-called consensus that existed in the past decade was substantially contrived and that individuals such as Morgan Kelly and David McWilliams were not listened to. Professor John McHale has a very valuable role to play, particularly as the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council was not in place during the period to which I refer.

As I indicated last evening, in recognising that the increase in public expenditure from 2014 to 2016 was 4%, as the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, stated, the Department of Finance sometimes needs to have the equivalent of a shoebox in which to keep one-off receipts it does not get in the general income stream. As I did recently, I wish to draw the attention of the House to the pupil-teacher ratio. In the Dáil yesterday, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, referred to a 28:1 ratio in primary schools, but the numbers on the website of the Department of Education and Skills indicate that the current ratio is 16.2:1. I am delighted that 2,500 extra teachers will be recruited, reducing the ratio, but wrong numbers that exaggerate the problem appeared in the Minister, Deputy Howlin's speech and are contradicted by the website. We all want smaller class sizes and may be closer to it than we believe. According to data up to 7 July 2015, the ratio in primary schools is 16.2:1 and, in secondary schools, it is 13.9:1. I do not know from where the higher numbers came. They artificially make the situation look bad, which is not the basis on which policy should be made. Yesterday's decision was correct, but the numbers reported to the Dáil need revision.