Ms Tara Farrell:

We have heard a great deal about access. To echo the point made by Senator Ruane, there is no homogeneous group of marginalised learners who all have the same access issues. Regarding community providers, I work in a community education setting where there are a wide range of access issues. Those can include geography, childcare, finance or a person's previous negative experiences of the formal education system. This is where community education has a major role to play, because community education providers understand the needs within their communities. They are, unfortunately, greatly under-resourced.

Picking up on the point made by Senator Coffey, let us not reinvent the wheel as many answers exist. I referred already to the report of the Joint Committee on Education and Skills on education inequality. If some of those measures were implemented, that would address many of these issues. I say that because community education providers need the resources to be able to support learners. I will finish with a quick point. Aontas is celebrating being in existence for 50 years this year. We had a lifelong learning summit in Croke Park some weeks ago. One of the key points that came out of one of our discussions was the notion of the hard-to-reach learner. Many of our learners are telling us that they are not hard to reach, they are just not being listened to. That is a really important point and that is where initiatives, such as the community education network, are so important to support learners in having their say and strengthening their voices. The community education providers need to be resourced to do so.