Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Ms Catherine Joyce, head of advocacy at Barnardos; Professor Sean Tierney, former president of the Irish Medical Organisation; Mr. Maurice O'Connell of the Alzheimer Society of Ireland; and Mr. John-Mark McCafferty from the Society of St.Vincent de Paul.

I thank the delegates for accepting the invitation to come before the joint committee this morning. The witnesses may have got some indication of what we are hoping to achieve from observing the last session. The delegates have taken the time and effort to make a pre-budget submission to the committee and to the Department of Finance. I hope to get a flavour of the submissions and give members the opportunity to question the witnesses on specific elements of them. We are behind on time but we have about 45 minutes I will put a question to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and members can follow with more questions.

One of the proposals in the submission from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is to prioritise the funding of upskilling teachers to improve literacy and numeracy in students from disadvantaged areas. The reason that leapt up at me is that in my previous occupation, I was adult literacy organiser with the City of Cork VEC, so I would be very interested to hear the rationale. There are services there already. Is the Society of St. Vincent de Paul trying to broaden those services or is it an opportunity to put new services in place that would run in tandem with the existing services?