Erin McGreehan (Louth, Fianna Fail)

As a follow-up to that on accessibility of courses for students with disabilities, I hear there are fantastic offices in each higher education institution. They do an awful lot of work and they are getting a lot of resources. Resources are tight in the further education sector and I hear from tutors and the principals in the FET institutions that there are limits to what they are able to offer. They would love to be able to do more because the idea of the further education sector is that people are local and familiar with the building and it suits people with disabilities - it suits many different people - to go local and get educated locally by people they know.

The Minister said extra funding was given to SOLAS and the ETBs, but from a departmental point of view, should it dictate to make sure there is sufficient funding coming from the money it is awarding to the further education sector to make sure it is supporting people with disabilities as best it can and the best it is able to do?