Results 41-60 of 4,969 for speaker:Paul McAuliffe

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: Say that it is a priority.

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: What the Department has identified is a gap. It is not a priority; it is a gap. I am saying the officials should reflect on it and come back to us with a solution. I want to focus on three areas if I can get through the next couple of minutes. I was delighted to see the school secretaries programme through which secretaries were taken on to the payroll system for the Department of...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: In some cases, more hours were being allocated than were-----

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I accept that.

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: In reality, however, a commitment was also given that the school caretakers would also be taken on to the payroll.

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: Is that likely to happen by September?

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: Of course.

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I met with the school principals and I have a list of suggestions. For example, we need to handle insurance better. There is much more co-operation that could happen around insurance. Much more co-operation could happen, and I know it does, around the group purchase of electricity and utilities and so on. We could be supporting schools to reduce their costs a lot more. There is value for...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: A school principal is the CEO of a very large organisation. Even on a school building project, for example, the amount of capacity hours a school principal puts into managing emergency works for the summer is huge. Sometimes it is very lonely at the top. The more schemes we throw at schools, while it is support of a kind, they need to be administered and managed. On costs, for example, we...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I thank Mr. Loftus for last week's announcement regarding the Scoil Chiarain special school, one of two schools. It is welcome. I argue it took a little too long to announce it, but I appreciate it. It will make a massive difference. It will also help to address the issue. We have opened 19 ASD classes in Dublin 9 and Dublin 11 over the past four years at primary school level but have...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: To be fair to the Chair, I think I am way over time. Am I correct in saying a figure of 25% of the total education budget is now being spent on special education?

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: If I were to ask for an update on payslips, is that enough of a question for me to get an answer before we get into a row about it?

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: It is an opt-in system at present.

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: What was the cost of payslips for last year?

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: From what total payroll number of staff?

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: We have a long way to go.

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I take that on board. Essentially, we have a payslips bill of about €3 million per annum, which everybody in this room accepts is not an efficient use of public money, and there is more printing on top of that, as well as postage.

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: Who pays for that?

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: It is paid by the public purse. Let us not get into that, as it is a different area. My point is that there is a cost of €3 million. In 2020, a figure of €10 million was given for a multi-annual period and postage has increased over that time. This problem is only getting worse in terms of the postage costs.

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: To be fair, I have allowed the witnesses a lot of time to talk about this so let me respond. The figure went from 19,000 to 27,000 and the witnesses are now saying it is in the mid-30,000s. That is over the space of the last two or three years.