Education escapes with very few cuts

In an education budget with very few cuts, Ruairi Quinn has kept class sizes at current levels and aims to avoid further cuts to resource teaching provisions for children with special needs.

With €44m having to be cut next year, in addition to savings from the Haddington Road agreement, his department was relieved to find hundreds fewer teachers were paid retirement lump sums than expected in last month’s spending figures — as highlighted in the Irish Examiner over the past week.

This is likely to have reduced by around €33m the amount he had to cut, with the same amount in savings achieved by the main policy measures announced yesterday.