MINISTER FOR Education Batt O'Keeffe said it was "simplistic and dangerous'' to pretend expenditure on public services could be allowed to grow.
"We must accept that the dramatic changes in world economic circumstances, changes which are challenging governments the world over, require decisive action," said Mr O'Keeffe.
"Are we to pretend, as some seem intent to do, that somehow here in Ireland we can carry on regardless?" He said "outlandish claims" had been made in the Dáil and there had been "scaremongering" in the past two weeks about the claimed impact on schools and children.
Mr O'Keeffe was replying to the Labour private members' motion calling for a reversal of the Government's education cuts. The House will vote on the motion today.
Denying that the Government was hiding figures in its estimates, Mr O'Keeffe said his department's budget had been prepared for next year on the same fundamental basis as other years by estimating the number of teachers who would be employed under the different categories.
He said it was essential that there be a cross-sectoral-redeployment-of-teachers scheme.
"We need to urgently build on the existing agreement on redeployment, where a post-primary school closes, and build in the arrangements for ensuring that teachers who are surplus in one post-primary school can be moved to meet the needs of other post-primary schools,'' he added. "We already have about 200 over-quota posts in schools.''
Labour education spokesman Ruairí Quinn said that the Budget had been little more than an act of "social vandalism". It was an attack on children, the most vulnerable in society, he said.
"It is an attack on our future because our children will be the generation who will guide us into old age,'' he added.
"They will care for us as we have done for our parents. It is an attack on our young generation. It pushes many shy, insecure four-year-old children into classes with more than 30 other children.''
Mr Quinn said the cutbacks made it impossible for under-resourced primary school teachers to cherish all the children equally.
"How can they find the time, or make the space, to monitor and guide each child?" he added.
Mr Quinn said that there were 450,000 primary pupils in overcrowded schools. In 12 years there would be as many as 650,000, according to the Central Statistics Office, he added.
Mr Quinn said that the population was growing but there was no place to house young children. There were 50,000 empty homes in ghost estates.
"This physical presence is a monument to the incompetence of Fianna Fáil, the economically illiterate policies of finance ministers McCreevy and Cowen and the greed of the Galway tent."
He said that 19 per cent of children dropped out of school after they reached 15 years. As many as 500,000 adults were functionally illiterate and the number was growing.
The Fine Gael education spokesman Brian Hayes criticised the Green Party. Addressing the Minister, he said: "Whatever about your performance in this debate, this is the Greens' Stalingrad.'' He said they needed somebody to stand up in the Department of Education, not a Minister who was the Taoiseach's puppet.
Sinn Féin Dáil leader Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said it was now clear that education was one of the sectors worst hit by "this callous and irresponsible'' Budget.
At the end of the debate, Simon Coveney (FG, Cork South Central) claimed that the word "fascist" had been used on the Government benches. Leas Cheann Comhairle Brendan Howlin said he had not heard the remark but would review the transcript of the debate.
