Labour slams Govt U-turn on class sizes

The Labour party has slammed the Minister for Education's admission that the Government will not be fully honouring its commitment on reducing primary school class sizes.

Mary Hanafin said yesterday that the promise to reduce class sizes for schoolchildren under the age of nine to a maximum of 20 by 2007 would not be honoured because it would require the Government to hire 2,500 extra teachers.

However, Labour spokesperson Jan O'Sullivan said there were plenty of teachers available if the Government only had the will to employ them.

"There are extra teachers being trained. There are graduates being trained for primary teaching and certainly the teacher-training colleges have expressed a willingness to work with the Government on this," she said.

"But [the Government] has been terribly slow off the mark. The promise was made when they went into government and they've done practically nothing about it."