EDUCATION received little in this year's Budget. The main item not covered by the Estimates was an additional £6.5 million allocated for major projects to improve schools in sub standard accommodation.
This is in addition to the £11 million scheme announced earlier this week, and already in the Estimates, for grants to schools for basic maintenance and minor improvement work.
The Minister for Finance also allocated an additional £1.6 million to enable a start to be made on implementing the recommendations of the Sports Strategy Group over the next three years. The report is expected soon from the group, which is chaired by the athlete John Treacy.
Another £600,000 went into capital expenditure on the Castle bar extension to Galway RTC.
In her post Budget briefing, the Minister for Education, Ms Breathnach, emphasised that she had been given enough money in the Budget to ensure that the pupil teacher ratio at primary level would be reduced to the target figure of 22:1 by September.
She also said she had received a supplementary estimate last year providing £1.8 million for education in relationships and sexuality.
She expected another "big investment" in this area next year.
She also said that by abolishing both undergraduate fees and covenants, the Government had gained slightly in financial terms. She said better off people had been disappointed that she had abolished covenants, because they had done better from them.
The National Youth Council of Ireland last night criticised the Minister for Finance for ignoring education.
NYCI president Ms Jillian Hassett said the Budget does not even attempt to solve the related problems of early school leaving and youth unemployment. This may be a pre election Budget but the Government has shown blind indifference to the 25,000 young people who leave school educationally disadvantaged, without a Leaving Cert or with a bare pass mark.
The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland said the decision to freeze the capitation grant for second level schools is "quite inexplicable."
The ASTI president, Mr John Mulcahy, asked why Ms Breathnach was "continuing to ignore the crying needs of our overcrowded, understaffed and underfunded second level schools."