The Taoiseach will well know from his earlier stint that investment in early years education is hugely important and also has a net economic benefit. We have seen recent reports stating reading and mathematical results for Ireland have gone down. Maybe we are still higher than a lot of countries but it is no consolation that if everyone is getting dumber, we are getting less dumb. The reality is there is a whole load of impacts there. In many developing areas, class sizes are still increasing, and some more settled areas that are down one or two pupils suddenly lose a teacher. Have there been serious discussions in the context of the upcoming budget on investment in education and trying to bring class sizes down? It is hugely important, especially with that literacy and numeracy element.

We are probably less brilliant than we were, as opposed to dumber and dumber. We are very high-up there. One wonders is that related to the advent of social media in terms of reading, literacy skills and numeracy. It is extremely important that AI and all of that, while very important, does not take away the capacity to reason, be creative and be original in one's thinking and analysing of the world and of issues and so on like that. There will be continued investment in education. The primacy of maths, English and so on is still very important at primary level in the overall curriculum. Class sizes have come way down but are variable, depending on location or on how the school allocates numbers and teachers.

I will not go into the age-old argument of whether the pupil-teacher ratio influences outcomes. A whole lot of other factors influence outcomes as well. The demographics are going down. The big issue we will have in the next decade is redeployment of existing resources to maximise outcomes of the kind the Deputy has identified.