Department urged to scrap planned education budget cuts

The Department of Education has been urged to scrap planned budget cuts after spending €149m less than expected this year.

The €5.61bn in current spending up to the end of September is nearly 3% less than €5.759bn that Education Minister Ruairi Quinn was expected to have spent. While there are often small variations at the end of each month, it compares with a €55m, or 1.1%, underspend a month earlier.

The department said most of the gap relates to the timing of payments.

For example, €55m had not yet transferred to student grants body Susi, but it expects the entire allocation to be spent by the end of 2013.

However, another €55m underspend to date relates to fewer-than-expected retirements by teachers, and in the VEC and institute of technology sectors.

The figures are likely to increase pressure on Mr Quinn to reduce his savings target.

He has speculated to date that he may have to cut anything between €44m and €100m from his overall €8bn budget next year, but the department would only say last night the minister will be seeking to protect frontline services in the budgetary process.

The figures emerged as 1,000 teachers and parents protested outside the department in Dublin over concerns about the possibility that Mr Quinn will increase class sizes by changing staffing levels for the country’s 3,300 primary schools. Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) general secretary Sheila Nunan said they show there is no basis for further education cuts.

“When a department doesn’t spend its allocated funding, it shouldn’t come looking for another round of cuts. The minister should protect primary education and maintain class sizes.”

Shane Kelly, the father of a pupil at a Drogheda school, told the INTO rally she sometimes cannot hear her teacher because too many children are making noise in a class of 36 senior infants and first class pupils. “If my daughter was in the creche around the corner it would be illegal for there to be only one adult in a class of 36 children. The situation is immoral and disrespectful to our children,” he said.