Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am listening to what the committee has to say. This is a major change in culture and there will be other changes. I am glad there is broad consensus among all parties that the old practices are no longer acceptable. We should do it rather than have it done to us.

There will be a transition period. I cannot think of any other way of doing it and I said this in Piper's Hill at a meeting of the Irish Vocational Education Association, IVEA. In Mayo, Leitrim and Sligo, for example, between the enactment of the Bill and the local elections in June 2014, the combined membership of three vocational education committees, VECs, will meet together, and this will attract public attention. We will need a communications strategy to minimise the banner headlines we are likely to see.

I was struck by a point made by Deputy McConalogue. Sometimes a stranger from outside the parish can say things that cannot be said in a more intimate community. I stand over the proposals, but many local community schools will not have a direct member of an education and training board, ECB, on its board of management. Does that make them any less democratic than the nuns' or brothers' schools up the road? The traditional assertion has been that there is democratic accountability in a VEC school by virtue of its composition and the fact that there was usually a member of the VEC on its board. The motivation for being a member of a school board could be questioned. Whether or not the member made a significant contribution to the discourse of the board of management could also be questioned. Practice and experience will vary.

One of the strengths of VEC community schools is that they are accountable to the electorate, if the electorate want to pursue that accountability, through the chief executive or members of the VEC in a way that none of the free voluntary schools are accountable at all. We have an emerging situation in some of our primary schools where the bishop does not want to know if there is a problem on the ground. In a primary school the catchment area is smaller, there is a board of management and a parent can get involved, but they are still at the mercy of parents' representatives or community representatives who do not want to exercise their responsibilities.

I do not have a formula for dealing with this. One can over-prescribe requirements but one is dependent on human behaviour for which one cannot legislate. I will reflect and read the blacks of the Committee Stage debate to see if we can get a balance between the perception of democratic accountability and the exercise of that responsibility in a frugal manner, more frugal than has previously been the case.