Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

Increasingly, we are seeing that the completion rate of people in second level schools is at 86%, which is encouraging, although of course it would need to go higher.

It is also the case, although I would like to see it otherwise, that schools that qualify for disadvantaged status for the most part do not offer transition year. Many of the students who would be completing their education at 18 years of age, with the opportunity of hopefully continuing on to third level education, would also qualify for third level grants. These are the people about whom the Deputy expressed concern. They will not have to pay registration fees and may also qualify for maintenance grants. Given the changes in child benefit, we are at least getting them through their second level education and hopefully they will then qualify for the third level education grants as well.

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