A union representing primary teachers is welcoming steps announced in yesterday's budget to reduce class sizes.
€9.2bn will be spent on education next year, which will include employing 1,165 extra special needs assistants and 980 additional teachers.
€4m was also announced to extend the hot meals programme to more DEIS schools.
John Boyle, General Secretary of the Irish National Teachers Organisation, says smaller class sizes is an important step forward.
"Our big ask was to bring our super-sized classes down to European levels over the next three budgets.
"We now have a further reduction, it's the first time that we have had successive budgets reducing class size in primary and that's certainly welcome, and we must give credit where credit is due.
"We're down to 24 in the really big schools, and 23 in the smaller schools. We need to get down to 20, which is the European average."
