Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The statutory role of the National Educational Welfare Board, NEWB, is prescribed in section 10 of the Education (Welfare) Act 2002. The core focus of that work is to ensure that each child attends a recognised school or otherwise receives a certain minimum education.

The Deputy's question is about the broad role of the NEWB and the work it does, but the Deputy spoke about child benefit and whether it should be linked to school attendance. This is an issue on which people have strong views and I am aware the Deputy has strong views on it himself. Whether child benefit should be linked to particular behaviour by parents, in terms of sending children to school or looking after their children a certain way, raises a lot of questions that have not been teased out yet. These questions would need to be teased out if one was to go down that route.

What is happening with the NEWB is that all of its functions and staff are coming together in the new Child and Family Agency. All of the functions of the NEWB are being transferred to the new agency and school attendance and the role of the school will be central to its work. For the first time, we will have under the one roof, child protection social workers, education welfare officers and family support workers and these will work together in the interest of families. The overall educational welfare responsibilities will have high visibility and I see this as important. The transfer of educational welfare services into the agency will broaden the focus of the agency and its resources and tackle educational welfare as a key outcome for children in their own right. Apart from the particular point being made about child benefit, having this kind of focus on school attendance is critical for the new agency, because we know from research that non-attendance at school is a good indicator of problems in families.

I have seen initiatives that work to address non-attendance at school that do not involve taking money from parents by reducing child benefit. I have seen very successful initiatives where an all-school approach is token and where people work with the community, the families and children. A high priority is given to the number of days children attend school and there is close follow up with the children who do not attend. That is a very successful way of getting children back into school. I recognise the Deputy's interest in this particular issue, but I do not know what the research says about it.

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