I commend my hometown of Navan, which for a good few years never really did very well when it came to the Anti-Litter League. A very progressive new Tidy Towns committee has been set up in Navan. I cannot take any credit for it. I have not even been out with them. I hope to get out with them in the future. We have moved from being No. 30 in the anti-litter league table last year up to No. 18 this year. It is the first round and then they go back and look at it again. I want to commend Navan because we have another lovely sister town in my constituency called Trim that is spotless and wins many awards. I am delighted that the capital town of Navan has come up to No. 18.

That being said, I am going to tell Members about something that once they see it, they will not be able to unsee it. I refer to the little white stickers from disposable vapes that are on every single bin across Ireland. It is absolutely soul-destroying to see them. They are tiny little ones from disposable vapes, they are hugely unsightly and they make the areas that people are trying to keep clean look very dirty.

They are very hard to get off the bins. I raised this issue when I was a county councillor. Instead of a "Bin your gum" campaign, we could launch a "Bin your sticker from the vapes" campaign. Maybe we need to look at holding the manufacturers to account and make them come up with a way to ensure these little stickers are not part of the packaging. It is kind of like the stickers that are on Pink Lady apples. It is the only apple I know that has a sticker on it and you kind of wonder what to do with it. People genuinely put the vape packaging in the bin but it is this one little sticker they stick to pipes, walls and bins. We need to do something about it because it is dreadful and impossible to get off. We need to hold the producers responsible. Maybe they need to contribute to the cost. We need to run a public campaign to let people know not to do this. When people see the stickers on other things, they tend to put them on themselves. Could we ask the Minister for the environment to have a look at this and how we can hold the producers to account? Can we run a campaign about this? With all of the hard work that Tidy Towns committees are doing around the country, the last thing we need to see is a bin like this covered in white vape stickers.

I rise this morning to speak about education and teaching across the country. I have attended, as I am sure many here today have too, the INTO briefing across the road to get its insight into the way things are at the moment within our primary school education system. The INTO's ask is for 1,000 new teaching posts, which will cost €78 million. I appreciate this is a large sum of money and if we are to do this, it will be on an ongoing basis.

This is an investment we cannot afford not to make. If we look around the country, while we see our class sizes are the lowest they have been in two decades, at 23, we are still four ahead of the EU average. We are comparing very poorly with countries which are not as economically well-off as we are but where the average is 19. An addition 1,000 teaching posts across the country would reduce the pupil-teacher ratio of 20:1. From speaking to teachers, not just this morning but all across my area of north-west Cork, this is the first time in quite a few years there has been no difficulty in fulfilling new teaching posts. There are a lot of people returning from abroad as qualified teachers. We also have a lot of people graduating from our teaching colleges here. There will not be any difficulty in getting these people.

It would make a difference in every single classroom for the teachers. It is not always 23 students but that is the average. A decrease from a ratio of 23:1 to 20:1 would mean teachers would have more time to deal with children who have additional needs and more time to focus on those kids who need a little bit of extra help. There are so many kids stuck in the squeezed middle who need that little bit of additional help but, at the current moment and with the current pupil-teacher ratios we have, they are not getting that. If we look at predicted closures of schools across the country due to them coming under the pupil-teacher ratio, we are looking at 19 potential closures in Munster. Decreasing the pupil-teacher ratio would give a lifeline to these schools.

I am asking to bring the Minister for education in here to discuss this. I know there are a lot of pressures on the budget but we need to discuss this and it is a very important form of long-term investment.