Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

It is important to have more co-ordination between these services. For example, there are 40 visiting teachers for Travellers. One of the groups with whom the National Educational Welfare Board works closely is Travellers, yet there are 40 people who do nothing else but visit schools where there are Travellers. We must ensure there is not an overlap in this type of work. These services should complement each other.

The school completion programme and home-school-community liaison scheme were also mentioned. By working together, they can ensure their work is complementary. It is important that they should examine their workload qualitatively as well as quantitatively. Each scenario is different. However, the educational welfare board was only set up three years ago. It employs 73 full-time welfare officers as well as support staff, which demonstrates our commitment in this regard.

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