Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 3 July 2013
9. Deputy Joe Higgins asked the Minister for Education and Skills if he will reassure parents and teachers there will be no cuts to other education services following his announcement not to implement his planned cuts to resource hours. [32241/13]
View answer12. Deputy Joan Collins asked the Minister for Education and Skills if he will clarify his statement that pupil teacher ratios in schools may be increased to pay for the reversal of planned cuts to supports for children with special needs. [32053/13]
View answer16. Deputy Willie O'Dea asked the Minister for Education and Skills the implications for the education budget in 2014 of the additional resource teachers announced on 25 June 2013; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32249/13]
View answer23. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Education and Skills if he will provide assurances that the allocation of an additional 500 resource teachers to meet the increase in the percentage of children with special needs who are attending school from September 2013 onwards will result in funding being withdrawn from the overall education budget; if he will confirm that he has no plans to increase the pupil-teacher ratio. [32216/13]
View answer24. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked the Minister for Education and Skills the implications for the education budget in 2014 of the additional resource teachers announced on 25 June 2013; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32280/13]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 9, 12, 16, 23 and 24 together.
I have authorised the NCSE to restore the level of resource teaching allocations to be provided for students with special educational needs to the 2012-13 levels. There will not now be a reduction in resource teaching time for these pupils for the coming school year. The first tranche of resource teaching posts have now been allocated to schools by the NCSE.
A number of additional posts will be required to ensure that allocations can continue to be made for valid applications for resource teaching support received for the coming school year. The full extent of this demand will not be known until September but it may require the allocation of up to 500 additional resource teacher posts.
The implications of this for my Department's employment control framework and Vote will be raised with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and will also be addressed in the forthcoming process in formulating budget 2014. The reality is that the allocation of 500 additional resource teachers could require additional expenditure of up to €22 million by Government in 2014. This is in addition to the pre-existing requirement to identify net savings of €44 million to meet the 2014 ceiling set out for my Department in the expenditure report 2013.
I am not in a position at this time to anticipate future budgetary decisions. All of these issues will have to be considered as part of the normal budgetary and Estimates process for 2014 and beyond.
The Minister was not clear whether that would definitely happen, even though he raised it in the recent reports. By doing that, many people are scared the pupil-teacher ratio will be increased. This sounds very much like the last time, with the decision to reverse the cuts to the DEIS schools and the cuts to the grants to schools. The Minister is accepting the constraints of his budgets. There is supposed to be €1 billion available, which he could source. Is he banging the table or whispering in the ears of Ministers to say we need extra resources to protect people who need this support? We cannot allow any more cuts to people who need resource teachers or special needs assistants. Many schools have cut the number of special needs assistants. Last week, three people in Blanchardstown lost their jobs as special needs assistants. This is an area where the Minister, as a Labour Party Minister for Education and Skills, must put the boot in and say: "No more cuts. The money must come from somewhere else." Has he considered increasing the financial transaction tax by a percentage to ring-fence money for the education of the most vulnerable people in schools?
I thank the Minister for the clarification. I take it from his response that he is planning to hire up to 500 additional teachers in the autumn to meet what may be additional demand.
If it is required.
In a previous response in the Dáil today the Minister indicated that he did not expect any overall change in the number of resource teachers in the system, so the two statements are contradictory. He has brought forward the 500 places from the autumn to now to ensure the extra 12% in demand is met, and there was no clarity until now as to whether the Minister would increase the overall cap. From what I gather, the Minister has indicated he will hire up to 500 additional teachers. Last year there were 500 teachers allocated in the autumn to meet increased demand, so there is every reason to believe the increased demand will come about. Will the Minister give an assurance that the intention is for up to 500 additional teachers to be hired in the autumn to meet demand?
There have been stories in the newspapers this week that it is the Minister's intention next year to increase the overall pupil-teacher ratio to pay for this. Will he give an assurance to the Dáil that this will not be done? It would be unfair and the wrong approach by the Government to increase pupil-teacher ratios in the mainstream. I ask the Minister to assure us he will not consider it for next year.
I take it from the Minister's answer that the €22 million potential cost will not have to come from the education budget and that he is in discussion with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to see if it can be found elsewhere. I hope that is the case as we are looking at another €44 million having to come from the education budget this year. It is impossible to say that we can take €44 million, never mind €66 million, from the budget this year on top of what was taken last year and what is proposed to be taken out next year without affecting front-line services. That is not possible.
With regard to how the Cabinet reaches these decisions, every Department is being given a reduced budget and the Minister in question is told to find the savings. That is not the approach that should be taken and other EU governments take a very collective decision, particularly when it comes to education, where ring-fencing can apply. That means other Departments would have to achieve additional savings but the other countries reap the benefits of prioritising education for generations to come. I do not understand why this Government and the Cabinet operate with a silo mentality, with every Department given a reduced budget. There seems to be little collective thinking and it is not the way to proceed, particularly with education.
Of the three big spending Departments, education has been ring-fenced to this extent, and it is the only Department that is hiring additional staff. That is happening because the population is growing.
It is hiring additional staff on a reduced budget.
The Minister, without interruption. The Deputy will have an opportunity to respond.
It is ring-fenced to the extent that where the student population grows - and we know it is growing - extra teachers required are being hired. That is unlike the position in other Departments. It is only to a certain extent that the education budget has been ring-fenced, as each departmental budget must amount to an overall targeted total of public expenditure. The reason for this target is our current position of deficit, where we are borrowing money to provide public services. We are raising taxes and many people are struggling and finding it difficult, so we do not want to put any more of a burden on them, so to speak, in their outgoings. We must try to find savings within the education budget as a result, which is of the order of €8 billion. Within it I have been asked to find €44 million.
We thought we could find a reduction in reducing by a portion of time the allocation of resource teachers to children with special needs. When this was announced, it provoked a reaction that we all saw and I listened to it before deciding to change the policy. In so doing, I had to say that I will find the resources, as I did with the DEIS issue, where we were not taking out DEIS posts but rather legacy posts that had been put in before the DEIS system and retained. In that case there may have been two DEIS schools beside one another with one having more resources than the other because it got its resources earlier. When that attempt at levelling the field provoked a reaction - I understand the reasons the reaction was clear and sincere - we altered the decision, and I have done so again in this case. The modification means that if we must deploy an extra 500 teachers into 2014, the cost will be of the order of €22 million, and we must consider this on top of the €44 million.
I stated that I presumed I would have to find this resource from within my Department. I was asked to put a figure on that and I was asked where it was likely I would get it. All I indicated was that the only place one could easily get money of that particular order was in the pupil-teacher ratio. I assure the Deputy that no decision has been made. I was asked a question and I gave an open and honest answer to it. The question of whether those adjustments in the departmental budgets must be made, who will make them and when it will happen, as well as the issue of exemptions, are part of the budgetary process. That has started and the budget this year will be on 15 October, two months earlier than normal because of European co-ordination purposes. The process has commenced but no decision has been made so I cannot give an indication or assurance about any aspect of the process until its completion.
The decision to cut the hours of resource teachers should not have been made in the first place, as was decisively shown by the decision to reverse the cut. The country should protect the education system but many people believe it has hit rock bottom and there is very little to give. The pupil-teacher ratio has been increased twice in the past four years and careers guidance counselling has been lost in many schools. Principals have been trying to work through problems for the past three or four years but at this point, as noted by other Deputies, we must hear from the Minister that there will be no more increases in the pupil-teacher ratio. Schools will not be able to cope with that on top of having to provide for students who have been transferred to the mainstream. The decision was taken to put our most vulnerable special needs children into the mainstream so it is the Government's responsibility to meet the needs of those pupils but not at the cost of anybody else. That is the bottom line.
Has there been consideration of issues like increasing the financial transaction tax to provide money for increased hours for resource teachers? I have received reports from schools which have been refused special needs assistant resources despite going through the process. Those questions will be raised in the future and they must be dealt with. The Minister should protect education now rather than bring it down any more.
I am quite concerned by the Minister's response indicating that the only place to find the money was in the pupil-teacher ratio. It seems to be the only area identified so far, and the Minister has not yet given us an assurance that he will not go down that path. I remind the Minister of what he said when he stood where I am as Opposition spokesperson for education seeking the job he has today. In October 2008 he indicated that by increasing class sizes, teachers become overly stretched and pupils are paid less attention in class, with the quality of teaching suffering. He argued that this was not good enough in a modern country and that we should be trying to reduce the pupil-teacher ratio rather than increasing it. That was the Minister's position and people at every primary school in the country would be very concerned about his response today, which is that the only area he has identified to find potentially €22 million next year is in the pupil-teacher ratio.
I will indicate to the Minister that my party has ring-fenced education spending in our pre-budget submissions. We put it to him that he needs to do the same and protect education. I ask that he does that. Perhaps he might respond to me.
The Minister will have an opportunity to respond. I call Deputy O'Brien and then the Minister.
Even if by some miracle, the Cabinet decided to ring-fence the education budget this year and not force the Minister to look for savings of €44 million and possibly €66 million, we will still see cuts because we have had multi-annual year announcements. We will see another reduction in capitation grants of 1% in 2014 and another 1% in 2015 so even if a collective decision was taken at this stage to protect the education budget, we will still see a reduction. We might not get to the question in respect of the Education at a Glance report but that shows that our percentage of public expenditure on education is decreasing from 13.7% to 9.7%. We are now ranked 29th in the OECD in respect of how much we spend on education. I believe the Minister is serious about building a high-quality education sector and a knowledge-based economy but we cannot do so if we keep cutting our budgets at a time when we have an increased number of children going to schools. It is impossible. Something has to give. There must be a line where the quality of education will be directly impacted if we continue to cut and I believe we have reached that point. I believe the Minister is also of the view that have we reached such a point. The Government as a collective needs to seriously look at ring-fencing the education budget.
We must understand where we all are, not just in this country but across the whole of Europe and indeed in Northern Ireland where there are reductions. People are struggling, salaries have been reduced, people have lost their jobs in many cases and businesses have had to let people go in order to survive. While we have been able to ring-fence a certain aspect of the education budget by virtue of the growing population, I have not and nobody else would have been able to isolate or ring-fence in its entirety an entire budget. They might be able to suggest it in Opposition but if they had to implement it, it would be a different case because other pressures would arise.
At the moment, this country and republic can only borrow money on terms and conditions we can afford from one source. That is what the loss of economic sovereignty means. Hopefully, we will be out of this situation by the end of this calendar year. We will still have to borrow money but we will not be subject to the diktats of the troika as we currently are. The troika has said we must get our budget deficit down in a series of steps to just under 3% of GDP in two years.
At the expense of people who need it.
The Deputy may not like the realities of the world but she cannot ignore them, in the same way as I do not like them either.
The Minister, without interruption.
Why is he implementing them?
The Deputy saw what happened in Greece where the country nearly closed down and had to change. We must navigate our way back to regaining our economic sovereignty so that we control our own destiny. Hopefully, by the end of this year, we will be in a position where we will be able to borrow money on our terms at a price we can afford and be able to deploy our resources in a way that does not dictate the speed at which we recover a balance in our budget. If we do not have a balance in the budget and control our own moneys and how we deploy them, we are not an independent people. Every person who comes out of unemployment and re-enters a job if we can stimulate the economy to create and sustain that job saves the taxpayer about €20,000 on average. When a person moves from being on social welfare and support systems to getting a job and salary and paying whatever tax is due on that, the overall average figure is a saving of €20,000. Therefore, stimulating and managing the economy to create employment is one of the overall responsibilities of the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. It is against that backdrop that we must balance matters. Every organisation and household has to live in the same world. The fact that we are trying to do it does not mean we like doing it.
The fact that we have to do it does not mean we either approve of it or like it. We do not.
You are the Labour Party that is supposed to be representing the ordinary working man and woman.
The Minister, without interruption.
What about corporation tax?
All of those measures have been looked at and will no doubt be looked again and those cases will be made but I am charged with answering questions relating to education and am trying to make the case that in a budget in round figures of €8 billion, I must look for a figure of €44 million and possibly an additional figure.
Returning to the point raised by Deputy McConalogue when I was asked where I could find that money, I presume it will have to come from within my own budget. I indicated that the only area that had money of that order and scale where one could do it without a range of other things happening was the pupil-teacher ratio but that was by way of illustration. I said that to find that kind of money, the pupil-teacher ratio is an obvious place where one would start to look. That is what I said and what I intended to convey. No decision has been taken yet in respect of the budget for 2014.
Is it possible to get a commitment?
