Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late. I raised the matter of the Life Centre last night in the Dáil. I know the MInsiter gave an explanation here. I fully understand that the Department and ETB are involved and that it is a complex issue. It is somethign on which we need to work out a compromise. I gave the example last night of my own experience of being on a board of management and being chair of a board of management of a facility in Blackpool back in the 1990s. I remember when I went in as chairperson, we had facilities that were totally inadequate for 50 young people. I remember spending €85,000 without having a tosser in the bank to upgrade it and to make sure we had the appropriate facilities.

That facility is working well. Many of the children, like the people in the Cork Life Centre, have dropped out of school. Many, although not all, but quite a number of them in the Blackpool centrewould have been referred by the gardaí for minor offences. In fairness to the community gardaí, they worked closely on getting them back into the education system. I gave the example of the project on Blackpool, which was done for me and for the board by Don O'Leary from the Cork Life Centre when he was doing his masters. We looked at the children who left us five years earlier and where they were now. More than 70% were in full-time employment. It was also interesting to find that, for a huge number of those children, the employment history of their parents would not have been great, so we were breaking a whole trend that was there and helping them. Likewise with the Cork Life Centre, there is a mixture of children there who do not fit into the formal education setting. When someone drops out of school, it can be very difficult for parents. I have also done a lot of work with people who are doing home-school teaching, providing tuition at home, and it is always challenging when a child drops out of school. In fairness to the Cork Life Centre, it has done a huge amount of work over the last 15 to 20 years that is has been there.

The question now is about how we get it into a structure that is acceptable to the Department and the ETB while at the same time it continues to have an independence to work and do things that are not necessarily within the formal education setting. The question is about that compromise. A compromise can be arrived at, but it is important that everyone is brought along, including the ETB, the Department and the people on the front line running this facility. I know the whole thing has been examined and the research has been done on it, but the next step is to bring the people who have been involved in running the centre to date into that equation and to convince them that they have an independence that does not restrict or in any way infringe on the work they are doing and the success they have in that work. They have lost, I think, eight teachers since June. Each of them had an average of six years' experience. There is a huge challenge there now. A number of people who went to work there on voluntary basis are now teachers in the formal education setting, so there is training for the students and the people in the educational sector. How can we progress it? It has come up as Topical Issue matter and as an oral question last night and it is being discussed again now, but we need to try to move it forward. Does the Minister see a way where we can bring everyone on board in regard to the changes required to give it the financial support it needs?