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

That is another question. It is not a question of using child benefit to ensure school attendance. The Deputy is talking about dealing with fraud, on whichI take his point with regard to school attendance and the number of children in a given area. We must do this in the early years programme. There is a roll call of the 68,000 children attending. The data are available. My point is that dealing with the issue of school attendance would be greatly facilitated by the agencies working together. I take the Deputy's point on agencies working together. Education welfare will now be under the aegis of an agency working with child protection and family support workers and I hope this will ensure we will have a more effective working arrangement with families where non-school attendance is a problem.

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