MINISTER FOR Education Batt O’Keeffe refused to be drawn on whether there would be further cutbacks in primary and secondary schools.
He had been asked by Fine Gael spokesman Brian Hayes to give a “categorical reassurance that there will be no further cutbacks this year in the primary and post-primary sectors’’.
Mr O’Keeffe said he would not make any prognosis on what might happen.
“As of now, the budget position stands in terms of the funding available to me. If the economy deteriorates further, I am not sure what impact that will have.
“Please do not hold me to making a prognosis. On foot of the information available, and on the basis of the budget allocation given to me, I do not envisage, at this point in time, any changes.”
Mr O’Keeffe said difficult choices had to be made across all areas of public expenditure.
“These decisions were made to control public expenditure and to ensure sustainability in the long run. In this respect education, while protected to a much greater extent than most other areas of public expenditure, could not be totally spared.”
The measures would impact on individual schools in different ways, depending on whether enrolment was rising or declining and the degree to which any one school had more teachers than it was entitled to under the allocation process, he said.
