I found it difficult to decide whether to come to this meeting because the experience of previous sessions like this with the Minister have been extremely disheartening and a waste of time. I came here out of duty rather than the expectation that anything worthwhile would take place in the interaction between the Minister and members. I would remind the Minister of the last time we sat down to deal with the Supplementary Estimates. He gave a clear commitment at that meeting, on 4 December, to publish information on the building programme but he has yet to fulfil that commitment. One wonders what is the point in coming here and discussing anything with the Minister.
Our experience over the past three years indicates that the Minister is either incapable or disinterested but he is not prepared to engage on education matters with members of this committee. That contempt which he has shown for members is borne out in the disgraceful standard of reply to parliamentary questions that I put down to his Department. That is the only way I can describe them. They are an absolute disgrace and fly in the face of any modern day thinking in terms of openness and transparency. They are the worst example of a Department doing its utmost to keep the lid on matters and refusing to provide the most basic information. It does so only when it is pressed to do it. That approach, which is so evident in the Minister's replies to parliamentary questions, shows an utter contempt for this House and for any sense of accountability or honesty in replies. All of us have tabled questions which were completely and studiously ignored and in reply to which we got a helping of waffle. That is the only way one can describe it. The Minister usually talks about comparisons between now and 1997, or whatever, and deliberately ignores the question asked.
In that context, I will make a few comments although I am not sure there is much point in doing so, given the Minister's lack of reaction or response to date, but I will mention them nonetheless. The principal concern I have about the current incumbent is the fact that he has no vision of our education system, nor was that evident in any of his public comments over the past three years. None of us knows what the Minister is interested in terms of education or what he is trying to achieve. His responses are always defensive and he simply trots out figures to fend off criticism. He has consistently refused to engage in any kind of debate in respect of education.
I want to go through the various areas where the Minister has failed in his duty and in his responsibility to those children who depend on him to provide a quality education service. Starting in the pre-school area, the Minister inherited a White Paper on education. The facts speak for themselves. This year, we have fewer State funded pre-school places than we had in 1997. That is a damning record. We all know the importance of early education. It is within the first five years of a child's life that the pattern is set down for all future achievement or lack of achievement but the Minister has consistently ignored the importance of early education and fewer children are now being funded in early education than when he came to office. He has done nothing in this area.
When the Minister was appointed to the Department of Education and Science, he said his priority would be to tackle educational disadvantage. In keeping with all his Government colleagues, and particularly the Taoiseach, that is all about style rather than substance. The Minister's press statements say one thing but his actions do not follow through. In the area of disadvantage, the very successful Breaking the Cycle pilot programme, which was set up some years before the Minister came to office, has not been extended during his tenure. Teachers will attest to the benefit of the Early Start programme in disadvantaged areas, but not a single additional place was provided during the Minister's term in office. Deputy Creed already referred to the fact that the Minister is statutorily obliged to establish the committee on educational disadvantage. He dragged his heels for two years on that and finally set up the committee around Christmas time, but it has yet to meet. That speaks volumes for his commitment to the area of educational disadvantage.
Last year we had the giving children an even break scheme. The Minister talked about disadvantage and trumpeted what he would do about targeting it, but when it comes to practice, he does not target. He simply spreads the resources around very thinly so that some schools in the most affluent areas benefit from that scheme while schools in the most disadvantaged areas have got little or nothing out of it. Decisions are being taken on purely political grounds. There should be clear criteria on how to qualify for this, but these are set so wide that every school can make a case for extra money. The Minister's Department did not announce the decision about the allocation of funding, his Fianna Fáil backbenchers in the constituencies rang the schools to tell them they were included in the scheme. When they received that telephone call many school principals realised it was just a political scam and not about seriously addressing educational disadvantage.
Yesterday in the Dáil, we raised the issue of capping access to psychological assessments. To cap that at 2% of children is a further attempt to spread the goodies around as thinly as possible so that schools in the most affluent areas have the same kind of access to psychological assessments as schools where 20% of children need such assessment. That does not do anything serious about tackling educational disadvantage. There is no serious targeting of funding and in disadvantaged areas where there is no potential to fund raise because of a lack of money in the parish, instead of providing children with the opportunity to get out of disadvantage, those schools are compounding disadvantage. The Minister's utter contempt for those kinds of problems has allowed that scandalous situation to continue.
The Minister talks about wanting to increase the participation of lower income groups at third level. Last year he established the top-up grant scheme to assist students on very low incomes, but we then discovered that students from very low income groups do not attend third level education. The criterion he set was that people should be in receipt of child dependant allowance, but not enough people qualified because children from families on social welfare do not get anywhere near third level education. A few years ago 2% of children from poor backgrounds were in college. That has gone way down and is now closer to 1%. No progress has been made in that regard. Yesterday, in reply to a parliamentary question on the top-up scheme, the Minister was exceptionally dishonest in the manner in which he gave that information and avoided the key points.
Having come through a period of exceptional economic growth with plenty of money available, it is a scandal that there are schools where principals, teachers and parents have to engage in fundraising, organising raffles, race nights and cake sales to pay for the insurance, cleaning and heating of their schools. It is an outrage that the State has not yet taken responsibility for the running of schools. People with money are voting with their feet and opting to send their children to fee paying schools, for private grinds, etc. The Minister should be endeavouring to achieve a high quality public education system, but as with many other public services in the past five years, the Government has run them down and left it to the people who can afford to buy into the services they want. This has happened in health and other areas. It is particularly true of education where we now have a very distinct two tier system.
It should no longer be necessary to grant aid essential ancillary staff such as caretakers and secretaries. Why not face up to the fact that schools need proper support staff. If they are not provided, principals spend a great deal of their time unblocking toilets, answering telephones, locking and unlocking doors and so on. These jobs should be done by ancillary staff. The Minister's move in relation to CE ensured that schools that most need additional staff have now lost them. This is another example of the way he has turned his back on disadvantaged schools. His new proposal goes nowhere near meeting the real costs of employing people as secretaries and caretakers.
The Minister has failed miserably in three other areas. He and his party came into power on the back of many promises, one of which was to restore the pupil-teacher ratio in career guidance and counselling services. The ratio was 250:1 in the bad old days of the early 1980s. It is now closer to 750:1. This is a serious indictment of a Government that had plenty of money to spend in the past five years. The Minister promised to restore that 250:1 ratio, but has failed miserably. He has appointed an additional 50 career guidance counsellors and has again let down the people he is supposed to be serving.
In February 2001 the Minister announced the establishment of a commission on teaching and got media coverage for it. He said he would give this his urgent attention and was drawing up terms of reference for the commission. That proposal has yet to see the light of day and speaks volumes for the Minister's lack of interest in matters relating to teachers.
The Minister has failed to make progress in decentralising his Department, which is now generally recognised as being seriously dysfunctional. To his credit, he commissioned the Cromien report, but since getting that report 15 or 16 months ago very little progress has been made. He has had much positive media coverage for commissioning that report, but it seems to have been left to gather dust. His Department has failed to accept the principles of accountability, to measure up to any kind of performance indicators or to interact in any meaningful way at local level throughout the country. This is another area in which the Minister has failed to make any real progress.