Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for not being present for the earlier presentations. Deputy Joe O'Reilly and I had a long-standing commitment to speak to a number of school groups at noon, which was arranged prior to the scheduling of this meeting.

Deputy Crowe and Ms Jones referred to the issue of disadvantage. She referred in a number of her contributions to shrinking services in education in particular. I am a great believer that if we do not empower the individual with proper access to education, training and upskilling, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage in communities will not be broken. Integrated and shared education is aspirational for all of us and we would like it to be achieved, but we need to be careful in aspiring to the optimum goal. Services will shrink further in the meantime and the students of today who need access to complete secondary education and to go on to third level or further education will miss out. We will not have either achieved shared or integrated education or educated the young person going through the system. We all work towards reaching the optimum provision of education but, in the meantime, we have to be careful to ensure that the present generation in disadvantaged communities who have not experienced the benefits they should have from the peace process do not remain in that cycle of poverty and disadvantage, which will contribute to further instability in these communities.

We had the RAPID programme in disadvantaged areas in our major cities, while the CLÁR programme was introduced in rural areas. They were targeted at these areas, and additional provision was made for infrastructure, services, community resource centres and education and health initiatives. The outcome was positive. Would we not be better off going down the road of identifying people's needs and insisting that the Northern Ireland Executive and the British Government provide adequate resources to ensure those who are in the education system or who may not be likely to complete their second level education are targeted? The completion rates for second level education in some communities in Northern Ireland are disappointing. There has been a dramatic improvement in this regard in the Republic over the past 15 or 20 years, and further improvement is needed. We need a huge focus on this because it is readily identifiable.

That is an area where nobody can come with baggage. We all want to equip young people from whatever political tradition or non-tradition from which they come. Do the witnesses agree that the Executive, the British Government, the relevant providers, need to give a certain impetus to those particular programmes that are targeted at those people most in need of assistance and most in need of educational attainment?