I move:
“That Dáil Éireann:
welcomes:
— the allocation of sufficient resources to meet demographic growth in our school system, including the allocation of additional special needs assistants and resource teachers;
— the funding of agreements reached with trade unions regarding pay levels for new entrant teachers, and full resourcing of the reform of the junior cycle; and
— the commitment contained in the programme for Government to reduce the pupil-teacher ratio in primary schools;
notes:
— the failure to take any action in budget 2017 to continue the reduction in primary school class sizes that began in budget 2016;
— the lack of any measures in budget 2017 to begin reducing school costs for parents and, in particular, the absence of any improvement to school funding, which the Department of Education and Skills has described as ‘a critical issue’;
— that official costings provided in advance of budget 2017 estimate the cost of maintaining existing levels of funding per student in third level at €21 million in 2017; that the Department of Education and Skills has identified a requirement of at least €10 million each year to fund the development of technological universities; and that the cost of increasing the number of apprentices in budget 2016 amounted to €10 million;
— that the funding of €35 million provided for investment in further and higher education in budget 2017 will not even cover the items listed above, let alone the determination of the Minister for Education and Skills to fund targeted initiatives to provide skills, additional research funding and to support disadvantaged students; and
— that a minimal increase of 0.1% to the national training fund levy would have raised €67.1 million in 2017 which could have been used to fund such developments; and
calls on the Government to:
— immediately commit to a one-point reduction to the staffing schedule of primary schools which controls average class sizes for the coming school year;
— publish a roadmap to outline how we can reach an average class size of no more than 20 within the lifetime of this Government;
— commit to multi-annual increases to school capitation rates, sufficient to end the practice of requesting voluntary contributions from parents;
— provide the full €21 million funding required to meet demographic growth in third level, and to direct additional resources at improving the staff-student ratios in third level and reducing the student contribution; and
— guarantee the funding required to fully roll out all new apprenticeships which will provide a wider range of opportunities for young people and, in particular, young women.
I wish to share my time with Deputies Willie Penrose and Brendan Ryan.
The failures and omissions in this year's budget are really quite startling. The failure to reduce class sizes, particularly for younger children, is difficult to understand, as is the failure to improve capitation payments for hard-pressed school budgets which would ease the pressure on parents for voluntary contributions and the failure to improve resources for simple schemes like book rental schemes in primary and secondary schools. It is very difficult to understand why these particulars were not addressed in the context of the amount of money that was available to spend. These issues are very well known not just to parents at school gates, but also to teachers, boards of management and everyone else involved in education.
As we face into the perils of Brexit, the greatest challenge this country has faced since the collapse of the banks and the construction industry, the lack of a detailed focus on education in budget 2017 is startling and disappointing. Regarding third level education, Deputy Micheál Martin frequently set out his stall and called for €100 million but what we saw in the budget was €35 million rather thinly spread. That €35 million in funding for investment in further and higher education in budget 2017 will not remotely cover the cost of a lot of the items on Fianna Fáil's shopping list, let alone match the determination of the Minister for Education and Skills, as expressed in quite a number of speeches, to develop targeted initiatives to enhance skills, provide additional research funding and support disadvantaged students.
Official costings released in advance of the budget estimate that the cost of maintaining existing levels of funding for students in third level is €21 million in 2017. The Department also identified a requirement for at least €10 million each year to fund the development of technological universities, although I note that the Minister seems to have sent that off to a review or discussion group, sine die. In fact, if Deputy Micheál Martin waits long enough into the new year, his record for producing reports and reviews will be surpassed in one year by this Government, judging by the number referred to in the budget and accompanying documentation. The Department of Education and Skills also identified a requirement for at least €10 million to increase the number of apprentices. I note that while there has been a very welcome increase in the number of apprentices since the previous Fine Gael -Labour Party Government re-launched apprenticeships in 2014 and 2015, the number of female apprentices is disappointingly small.
Education is a great liberating force in Irish society. That is why, as a society, we value education and why each generation and each Dáil seeks to improve on what went before. Opportunities afforded by a good education, starting at preschool, enable the whole person, from childhood to old age, to be the best that he or she can be. Education enables people of modest backgrounds to achieve so that progress and achievement is not simply confined to those who have inherited wealth or position from family. Since the 19th century, the importance of education has been a defining value in Irish society.
Good teachers are a critical feature of a progressive education system. It is through their experience that we as politicians get to know more about what helps children, as well as through talking to parents. We learn, through our teachers and the work that they do, what we need to do as a Dáil to support and develop a system in which children, teenagers and adults can do best and thrive. When the Labour Party drew up its plans for improvements, chief among them was a reduction in class sizes. Our plan also included improvements to the capitation grant which would reduce the cost of running schools and to schemes such as the book rental scheme. Such measures would actually help schools.
We are also seeing increasingly diverse school communities in my own constituency and right across the country. There are lots of students of international origin in our schools. In some cases, the children were born in Ireland but their parents came to this country from abroad. This has given rise to serious issues in the area of language skills, for example.
As I said earlier, when the great recession happened, apprenticeships collapsed. My party colleagues Deputy Jan O'Sullivan and former Deputy Ruairí Quinn, spent a lot of time in Government trying to revive apprenticeships, which was done from 2014 onwards. However, the slow progress in this area that has been made by the current Government is astonishing. There is no sense of ambition or of an understanding of the opportunities that good apprenticeships can provide. Qualified apprentices can subsequently go on to pursue an academic path or can start their own businesses and many of us would have family members who have done just that. This Government, locked as it is in perpetual discussion and division, seems unable to focus, which has resulted in a fatally flawed education budget for 2017.
There are some very welcome measures in the budget, particularly the provision of additional teachers and resources to meet population or demographic pressures. However, when it comes to the practical issues, who wants a class of junior infants, senior infants or first class of 30? Remember, these are children who have moved from preschool, where class sizes are a fraction of that number. Yet we are expecting schools to adapt to class sizes which are, according to the OECD, among the highest in Europe.
All of us here know personally, through work experiences or through family and friends, that access to good education, where opportunity is identified and ambition is encouraged, is critical to everybody's development. Perhaps that does not apply if one happens to have been born into a very wealthy family.
Unfortunately, the budget introduced by the Government recently, following a number of very difficult years after the collapse of the banks and the construction industry and 300,000 people losing their jobs, lacks any sense of vision or ambition. Now that this country has started to grow again, we are facing into the difficulties of Brexit. There was no sense in the recent budget of extra opportunities being created. Will the Minister of State with responsibility for apprenticeships explain why women are being left out of apprenticeships? A small sum of money would have funded a programme to identify specific apprenticeship opportunities for women, but such a programme is just not there. In this regard, as in many aspects of the budget, there is a lack of breakthrough vision for the future, rather than the past.