School Staff
Dail Éireann — 2026-10-01
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Robert O'Donoghue (LAB), Dublin Fingal West

I back my two constituency colleagues and thank them for sharing time with me. The north county is exploding in its demographics and school supply is lagging behind there as it is. St. Patrick's Junior School in Skerries needs to retain the 11th teacher for a number of reasons. The second class is going to go from 22 to 33 students if we lose the 11th teacher. I worked in a secondary school, so I know at first hand the impact increasing the number in a class by that size has on the attention students are going to get. With all the will in the world, if we add 50% to a class, it is so much more difficult for any teacher to address their needs. This is at a time when, as my colleague mentioned, we are looking at having 21 students per class. Could we please look at this again? Could we have some flexibility in this case?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-10-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:01:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-10-01