Mary Hanafin has today held a press conference.

Perhaps I'm overly cynical but Hanafin's love of announcements and then no action is starting to really frustrate me. The premise for this latest photo-op was the launch of an ambitious new school building program. New schools are certainly needed but given her track record should we expect that the schools (if they materialise at all) will now go on hold again until around election time.

I'm not surprised that the public are happy with her performance as her regular launches of initiatives and programmes make for good spin, but having spoken to teachers and principals of some of the schools most in need, they have no faith in the minister. One example of her spin and no subtance approach was the welcome announcement of 660 extra special needs teachers - cue photo-op. The problem is that within a few weeks Kildare discovered that 20 of our current special needs teachers were told they won't have a job in September and others are put on limited hours. Given the chronic over-crowding in the county's schools, I doubt anyone listening to Minister Hanafin's press conference would have imagined it meant cutbacks.

It's about time people started looking beyond the launches and flashbulbs, and began asking 'where are the results???'