Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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We discussed the arrangements for this meeting at our last one, so I suggest we move ahead. We do not need to go into the preamble again. I need to leave the meeting for approximately 15 minutes at 4.45 p.m. to go to the Dáil, so I suggest Deputy Martin acts as Chairman during that time. Is that agreed? Agreed. I am also conscious the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan, has to leave to go to the Dáil at 4.25 p.m, but I ask that the committee conclude this meeting by 5 p.m. We appreciate the fact the Ministers and their officials have come back to us for a second time and I ask that questions be brief, focused and based on the briefing material. At the last meeting, we strayed into areas of policy and I ask that we not do that today because every member is at liberty to table parliamentary questions. We can arrange further meetings on matters of policy with the Ministers and their officials.

I ask members, officials and those in the public Gallery to please ensure that their mobile phones are switched off for the duration of this meeting which has been convened to resume consideration of the Revised Estimates for Vote 26 - Education and Skills. We will start with programme B because we completed programme A at our last meeting. This was referred by the Dáil to the committee with an instruction to report back.

I welcome the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Richard Bruton, the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan, and their officials and thank them for the open and constructive dialogue with the committee secretariat's financial scrutiny team in developing the briefing documents for this meeting. I remind the Ministers that the committee agreed at the last meeting to proceed programme by programme and we will initially focus on specific subheads before broaching any questions on the remainder of the programme. I refer again to the briefing document prepared by the financial scrutiny team of the committee's secretariat to guide our consideration of the Revised Estimates. We will resume on programme B. The Minister made his opening remarks at the last meeting and we do not need to go through those again. We will go straight to subhead B5 on grants to SOLAS and further education and training.

I invite members to ask questions.