asked the Minister for Education the estimated cost of the proposals in the White Paper on Education and the cost of those proposals which will be implemented in the current year.
Ceisteanna—Questions Oral Answers. - Education Proposals Costs.
5.
The proposals in the White Paper range over a wide area of educational activity and the cost of implementation of the proposals in it cannot be segregated from the cost of various other developments. No realistic estimates as envisaged in the question could accordingly be made.
Is it not extraordinary that the Department can put a price on everything except the cost of the proposals in the White Paper?
It is not. In fact, to take the long distance programme, for example, there are so many variables that it would be impossible to quantify it until the scheme is under way. There is a matter of purchasing materials, for example, from television companies. There is also a matter of making new programmes through RTE and the involvement of the adult education officer, the National Council for Educational Awards and the National Institute for Higher Education, Dublin. As far as the engineering and science courses are concerned, and the reduction in the requirement of honours for the award of grants in that sphere, the Deputy will agree that until the results of the 1981 leaving certificate examinations are available there is no way we could quantify the cost.
Is it not customary in a White Paper to take one year as a base year, use the available information in respect of the cost of personnel and materials and extrapolate from the base year forward? The Minister should have within the Department sufficient personnel to carry out a cost analysis and prepare a time table for the White Paper, something he has failed miserably to do.
The Deputy will agree that it is very easy indeed to estimate on the basis of figures given, for example, in the White Paper what the additional teaching force will cost. It will be very easy indeed for any Deputy to make out what the capital cost of the provision of schools and so forth is. I do not think that the White Paper falls down in any way in this regard.
To bring us back to the long term and the short term, has the Minister any idea of the cost—apart from the cost of necessary increases of pupil enrolments— of the White Paper proposals which he intends to implement in this year?
I have mentioned two of the innovations, the long distance study one and the cost of the change in the conditions for awarding grants in the third level sector. The Deputy must agree with the logic of my statement that until we know the number of people applying in the science and engineering faculties in the third level institutions it is very easy to talk.
That is ridiculous.
I am trying to answer a question without being interrupted.
The Minister is attempting to avoid answering the question.
I am answering it quite straight up. It is difficult to know until we know how many applications are in under the new conditions for the award of third level grants. The Deputy will know also as far as the distance study is concerned that there are too many variables to be able to assess.
I ask the Minister if I heard him correctly to say that there are substantial parts of the White Paper that he would not know the cost of until he started to implement them. If that is so how could one possibly make reasonable policy decisions if one does not know the cost of one's decisions?
If the Deputy thinks that costing it is the most important part rather than the provision of the service, be it so. We put the White Paper together on the basis of what was desirable for the Irish education scheme.
Ceist 6.
The Minister has failed miserably to put across the document and he must admit it.