Labour pledge to increase education funding by €140m to ensure 'every child gets a fair start in life'

Labour has pledged to increase education funding by €140 million while reducing classroom sizes in a bid to “ensure that every child gets a fair start in life”.

At its education policy launch at party headquarters in Dublin, its spokesman on the brief Senator Aodhán Ó Ríordáin said Labour, as indicated in its manifesto, is seeking to make primary education “genuinely free of charge”.

The launch, which felt to an extent like something of a come-and-get-me plea to the student vote, saw commitments made to increase the capitation grant to DEIS schools by 50% at a cost of €23 million per year.

In terms of third level tuition fees, Senator Ivana Bacik said the party would “seek to” reduce the student registration fee by €500 to €2,500 in next year’s budget, a move which undercuts Fianna Fáil’s pledge to freeze fees in place.

Meanwhile the non-adjacent rate for eligibility for a student grant would be reduced from 45 kilometres to 24, at a cost of €26 million in a full year, the party said.

“In this election if you vote Labour you’re voting for the party of education, that believes that education is the great liberator,” Mr Ó Ríordáin said.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin.

He echoed his leader’s claim on Wednesday that Labour would not be in the business of making “grandiose” promises.

“Anyone who says you can cut taxes and increase funding in education at the same time needs to do more homework, and in particular more maths homework,” he said, perhaps with the €8.6 billion in tax cuts promised by Fine Gael over five years in mind.

Labour would “end the two-tier pay system” for teachers and school secretaries, while also ending pay inequality for new entrants to the profession, from 2021 Mr O Riordain said.

Raising the fact that Ireland’s secondary school teachers are expected to strike on February 4, just four days before the election, he said that such an action being taken at such a time shows that Irish teachers “don’t feel respected” by the Government.