Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 29 June 2016

Select Committee on Children and Youth Affairs

Estimates for Public Services 2016
Vote 40 - Children and Youth Affairs (Revised)

The budget for the school completion programme is €24.8 million; will this be spent? Tusla has protected the budget in 2015, given the importance of the programme. It is particularly important to me personally as a Minister. I am well aware of the work of the programme over the years and have worked with people to support the quality and scale of what we can do. The budget should be spent in 2016. The Deputies will be aware that the programme for Government contains a commitment to a new school completion strategy, as I mentioned yesterday evening, which I believe is critical to advance this extremely important service for children. That strategy will take into account the extremely helpful review conducted by the ESRI on the level of funding, which Tusla paid for. Clearly the report recommends that we cannot reduce the funding further. It would be important to examine whether we can increase funding. We need to look at how the funding is allocated and spread across the country, particularly which schools get it and how much is invested in light of the review of DEIS schools. It will be terrific to have that information in moving towards the initiation of a school completion strategy in order to deal with some of those issues.

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