Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies from all sides of the House for their contributions on this issue last night and today. I welcome the opportunity to address the House on what I consider to be a very important issue. It is entirely appropriate that we highlight the importance of our further education system and its aligned training sector both as part of our education system, which promotes lifelong learning, and as part of our country's future in terms of providing reskilling and upskilling opportunities for our citizens and in particular the very large number of people who are unemployed.

My colleague, the Minister, Deputy Quinn, made a point last night that deserves repeating, namely, that for far too long the further education sector has been something of a Cinderella in our education sector. Our debate in this House is at long last a welcome indication that we are making progress in bringing that sector forward and giving it a unique identity all of its own. The Government is leading on that both through maintaining and consolidating investment in further education and training to ensure that it has a sustainable future. It has introduced an ambitious programme of reforms to ensure that it can adequately meet the challenges of the 21st century. Chief among those reforms is the establishment of Solas, the new further education and training authority. We are abolishing FÁS and transferring its training provision to our new network of education and training boards,ETBs. Solas will have a role in a distinct and integrated further education and training sector not unlike the role played by the HEA for higher education.

For many Deputies the debate on the sector has focused on the budget decision to raise the pupil-teacher ratio in post-leaving certificate courses from 17:1 to 19:1. While it would have been preferable to avoid such a decision the Government saw that it was necessary at this point in time to protect front-line services to our children to ensure they can get the very best possible start in life. It was hard to justify a more favourable pupil-teacher ratio in the post-leaving certificate, PLC, sector which is geared mainly to very motivated adults rather than teenagers. I would highlight the fact that across the further and higher education training sectors the Government will provide more than 430,000 part-time and full-time places, including 32,688 approved PLC places, all of which are open to young people and adults including the unemployed.

Alongside the substantial reforms we are making across the education sector, the Department of Social Protection is fundamentally reorganising the public employment service with the creation of Intreo alongside a newly integrated further education and training sector as well as innovative schemes in higher education such as Springboard. I am confident we can continue to meet the needs of unemployed people who want to upskill or reskill to re-enter the labour market.

I take this opportunity to acknowledge publicly the very hard work that has been done by staff and management in VECs who are responsible for the vast majority of further education delivery. I also acknowledge the hard work of FÁS staff. It is without prejudice to the efforts of those staff that we are abolishing FÁS and transferring its training provision to the net network of ETBs.

Earlier Deputy Calleary correctly described the PLC and VEC sector as being very innovative and responsive. I have every confidence in the management and staff of that sector to be equally innovative and responsive in responding to the challenge, and I acknowledge it is a challenge, of increasing the pupil-teacher ratio from 17:1 to 19:1 to ensure that the provision in the PLC sector responds effectively to the demands of the labour market and empowers those who accessing those courses to re-enter the labour market in a very short space of time. In the coming period it would be vital for us all, including staff and management in FÁS and the VECs, to work in partnership. We are faced with an array of challenges and I am confident that based on our progress so far we will deal successfully with them.

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