In the Seanad 2nd Stage debate on the Teaching Council Bill 2001 on 5 April 2001, I said:

I take this opportunity to call for a fundamental revamping of our whole system of education.

The time has come for all the partners in education to sit down together and take a long hard look at the systems and structures we use and have used for many years to run education here. Our existing way of running education has outlived its usefulness. It is becoming more dysfunctional with each year that passes. We have to find a way of getting around that.

When the current disputes on teachers' pay have been resolved, as they eventually will be, the tendency will be for everybody concerned with education to heave a sigh of relief and to cod themselves into thinking that they have put things right. However, they will be wrong in thinking that way because only the symptoms will have been addressed and the disease itself will have been left untouched.

I first became aware that there was something radically wrong with the system of education when I became involved in the leaving certificate applied during the five years from 1993 to 1998. During that time I got a ringside view of how our system worked. While I admired many of the people involved, I was appalled at how the system worked.

First, it was a system that, from top to bottom, was chronically starved of resources. The educational infrastructure was gravely damaged by the cutbacks of the 1980s. The brunt of those cutbacks fell on the infrastructure because the strength of the teachers' unions managed to preserve the salary element of spending.

Second, I saw a system that was reeling under the impact of successive waves of unplanned and under-resourced change that had occurred in those years. The Department of Education and Science seemed to be prolific when it came to dreaming up changes but the task of implementing the changes was left to schools. There seemed to be a serious lack of understanding between the Department and schools about the practical implementation of changes the Department had suggested.

Third, I saw a system that suffered from a hostile and adversarial regime of industrial relations. From my years in business I have learned that it takes two sides to create an industrial dispute. A sector with bad industrial relations is usually one with a long history of failed relationships. Each new dispute is a raking over of old coals which have been kept alive over the years by successive confrontations. That occurs in industry, business and education.

Fourth, I saw no recognition anywhere in the education system of a need for radical change. Part of this inertia was born out of a conviction that we have one of the best education systems in the world. We hear this mantra all the time but believing it leads one to think that all that is needed is to tinker around the edges of the old system instead of questioning whether the methodology is correct in the first place.

We have been tinkering around the edges a great deal and the result is an education system that is slowly being run into the ground.

By way of example, I will take four straws in the wind.

First, we have a serious literacy problem which until recently we refused to believe existed.

Second, we have a totally unacceptable level of completion in secondary education. We aim at a 90% completion rate for the leaving certificate, yet we end up with only 80% or 81%. While our aim is that only one in ten students will never complete second level schooling, all we are achieving is that two in ten never complete it.

Third, we have a third level system which is flagrantly discriminatory in the social and economic backgrounds of its student intake. We see that happening repeatedly, yet we are not getting to grips with it.

Fourth, at all levels we have curricula and teaching methods which, despite the many changes in recent years - I have touched on some of them already - are still not geared to today's realities. They seem to be falling further behind as each year passes.

I could cite further examples.

During the current ASTI dispute we heard much about how teachers have lost status in the eyes of the community over the past 20 years, and I agree, but that loss of status is part of a wider loss for the educational system as a whole.

Education has never been so important, yet in spite of that, its status has not reached or maintained the level at which it should be. Both at national level in terms of its impact on our economic development, which we recognise, and at an individual, personal level in terms of being the way for people to better themselves and realise their ambitions, education has not maintained that status.

Never have we needed a first class educational system more than we do now because we have to grasp the opportunities that are there.

There is a mismatch between that national requirement and expectation on the one hand and the system we have to fulfil that need and deliver that expectation on the other hand. We have not yet found the solution to that mismatch.

Over the past few years I have noticed a growth in the recognition by those who run the country of the key place that education has played in our economic success and the role it will play in helping us to maintain that success. I have not noticed, however, a corresponding awareness of the need for change in that area. Nor have I noticed concern that the system that got us where we are today is no longer capable of performing that role in future.

The only ray of light I have seen in recent times was the internal report commissioned by the Department of Education and Science, which was leaked to the newspapers. That was the first hint of awareness that something was chronically wrong with the way we run the education system. That report could have been a flag for the various partners in education to rally round in demanding change. Unfortunately, however, is appears to have become buried in the heat of more immediate battles that have occurred in recent weeks.

When those battles are over and forgotten, the systematic problems will continue to exist unless we do something about them. If we fail to address those problems promptly and fail to recognise the need to rebuild our education system from the ground upwards, we will surely be sowing the seeds of future disaster.

That is the message we need to listen to and do something about. The wave we are riding on now depends crucially on having the right education system. The evidence points to serious shortcomings in the current system.