Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 16 May 2024
Public Accounts Committee
2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education
9:30 am
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source
I am sorry to cut in again but ten minutes is incredibly short and I have a list of questions as long as my arm. I am not buttering my own parsnips here but I want to talk about Gaelscoileanna in Dublin 2, 4, 6 and 8. I raise this because I have a passion for the Irish language. The people of south Dublin need a Gaelscoil but they are not getting one. There is a problem with the model under which schools apply for patronage and the Department also seems to be moving in the direction of extending existing secondary schools rather than building new schools. I am not going to ask a question on it but want to put the point across to our guests.
I want to come back to the Comptroller and Auditor General's special report on school transport from 2017 and the section on operational meetings. There was a considerable deficit identified there. Do we have a comprehensive service-level agreement in place now with Bus Éireann, which was not there previously? In those operational meetings, we did not have things as basic as terms of reference for the meetings. We did not have advance circulation of management reports. There was no evidence that discussions were taking place in relation to budgets and the actual cost of the school transport scheme. The finance reports were in bullet form with little detail. Has there been significant reform of these operational meetings in response to the Comptroller and Auditor General's report?