Ms Catherine Joyce:

We support the recommendations of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul on literacy and numeracy. In addition, there have been a number of cuts to front-line education services in recent years. As a basic element of meeting literacy and numeracy goals, there should be no further cuts to front-line education services. In light of additional challenges to children from disadvantaged backgrounds, teachers must be supported and class sizes should not be cut, particularly in DEIS schools.

Barnados sees the value of early years education. Child care and quality after-school care are important in supporting children who might have additional educational needs. There has been much discussion about adequate and affordable child care and after-school care as labour market activation measures for parents in full-time and part-time work. However, we also need to focus on early years education in terms of its benefit for children. We are very far away from the Scandinavian model mentioned by the Minister for Social Protection earlier this year when talking about cuts to the one-parent family payment. We recognise that this will not change overnight. However, we should start to move towards better early years and after-school services. As a first step to that we should maintain funding for the pre-school year in the forthcoming budget and look towards extending it for a second year, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds in recognition of their needs in coming to education on a level playing field and the value early years education has in that regard.