Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Contrary to what the Government sometimes claims when something positive is being done we are willing to support it. The Bill deals with an important area. Given the huge levels of unemployment, the new education and training boards and the new agency, SOLAS, will have an important role to play in trying to upskill and retrain large sections of society who have been forced into unemployment as a result of the crisis and need to be facilitated to upskill and retrain in order to re-enter the workforce. It is important that we get the Bill right and that the new structures, when established, genuinely respond to the needs of people for education and retraining to return to the workforce, whether those coming through the post-primary system or adults who require retraining. Deputy Jonathan O'Brien mentioned literacy and numeracy, the importance of which is further highlighted in the context of the need to retrain and upskill. Many of those who are without work and want to find a place in the workforce have serious literacy problems. The literacy problem is a real barrier for large numbers of people to find work and contribute to a modern economy that is advancing rapidly. We must get all those issues right and do our best to provide the education and training that people need for a new economy.

It is welcome that the legislation and the infrastructure are being rationalised for the VECs, now the education and training boards. The Minister for Education and Skills said this is running parallel to and matching, at some level, what is being proposed for the structures of local government reform and the rationalisation of same. That is welcome and we all understand its importance. In so far as it can deliver savings where there is unnecessary replication of administration that does not contribute to the delivery of front-line services for which the system is supposed to provide, then all of those things are welcome. However, we need to enter a caveat here in that in the current climate the terms "reform" and "rationalisation" are often used to cover over what, in many cases, are cuts. It is important that rationalisation does not become a euphemism for cuts. There is a problem if that is what is it and if we are talking about cuts. I do not have a problem with cutting unnecessary administration nor with cutting the remuneration for chief executive officers in the education and training boards. There will be cost savings at that level because there will be 16 education and training boards as opposed to 33 vocational education committees. The remuneration for the chief executive officers is generous, ranging from €103,000 up to €127,000.

It seems quite high we may need to look further at that. I have no problem with making savings at that level, but not if it runs alongside cuts in the education budget generally, with the cutting of capitation grants paid to schools and further cuts imposed on primary schools as a result of the correct decision by the Government to back off on the cuts to DEIS schools. All the restructuring and rationalisation in the world does not mean very much if we are cutting funding and resources to the schools and education services and do not have adequate teacher numbers and so on to provide the education and training that is so desperately required. It is required now more than ever given that an additional 10,000 pupils are joining the education system every year and the numbers unemployed who require retraining and upskilling are significantly greater than they have been at any time in the recent past.

Against that background, even holding current levels of resources would be tantamount to a cut in services. However, we have even had real cuts in addition to that. We cannot hope to deliver on what these education and training boards need to do and what the education system in general needs to do unless we stop the cutting agenda overall. Having said that, I still acknowledge the usefulness of legislation to rationalise the structures. We probably had an unnecessary number of VECs, and amalgamations can work.

A number of concerns have been raised with me on the issue of workers' rights. The Bill removes a number of the protections that existed in the previous legislation dealing with VECs in the areas of suspension, dismissal, removal from office, and payment for employees, teachers and other staff. The TUI has made it very clear that it is concerned about this and that the protection for workers' rights in the sector needs to be retained. That is a matter that needs to be reviewed as we proceed with this legislation.

On the more general issue of cuts and rationalisation, in a number of areas, according to the TUI, the authority that previously vested in the Minister for Education and Skills in the appointment of board members, chief executive officers, and so on is now migrating to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. I share the TUI's concern, as it would indicate a cost-cutting approach to the rationalisation rather than one whose starting point is the educational needs of the pupils or service users of the new ETBs. Often the driver behind reform of the health service and in other sectors is not the best interests of the service users or the provision of services but simply the imperative to cut in line with troika targets.

Deputy Mattie McGrath referred to issues of procurement, an area on which I am not an expert. A VEC staff member in my area who would probably prefer to remain anonymous recently showed me some documents indicating there is a new regime for procurement requiring everything to go a central body. All items such as stationery for the VECs must be purchased at a central level or through an approved set of providers. He pointed out that this was likely to have a very damaging effect on the local economy in that previously many of these items would have been sourced from small local businesses in the area. In addition, in many cases the prices they now have to pay for these supplies and goods are actually higher than they were when bought from local businesses. This is not true in all cases but is in certain cases. He showed me the documents - I do not know why Deputy Timmins is shaking his head.

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