Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I understand that the Deputy is referring to the action plan of the national forum on primary education, Ending Disadvantage. The forum was held in St. Patrick's College in Drumcondra in July 2002 and was planned by a national planning group representing all national agencies working in the area of educational disadvantage and parents living in designated areas of disadvantage.

One of the recommendations of the forum was the devolution of the organisation and delivery of pre-primary, primary and post-primary education, third level access and further and second chance education from the Department of Education and Science to local structures. The report also envisaged the devolution of budgetary control, responsibility for the identification of local and regional educational needs and strategic planning to meet the needs to those local structures.

The Deputy will be aware that my Department has established a regional offices service as a result of the recommendations made in the Cromien report, which, in October 2000, reviewed my Department's operations, systems and staffing needs. The implementation of the recommendations contained in the Cromien report were approved by the Government.

This regional office service, which is an integral part of my Department, consists of ten regional offices and a central directorate of regional services. The role of the offices is to support a socially inclusive society by representing the Department on appropriate regional and local bodies, such as the city and county development boards and the regional and local drugs task forces, communicating information on education issues to and from the Department and providing any other educational services that can best be undertaken regionally.

The regional office service also co-ordinates the response of the Department to the education needs of newcomers, manages the visiting teachers services for Travellers and the hearing and visually impaired and manages the distribution of dormant accounts funding in the education sector.

While the Department will continue to review the operation of the regional offices with a view to transferring other functions to them as appropriate, it is not proposed to transfer to them the range of functions envisaged in the action plan of the national forum on primary education.

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