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

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. My Department currently provides resources for the Life Centre in Dublin and in Cork. In the past academic year, my Department allocated a total of 2,768 teaching hours to the centres under the co-operation hours scheme operated by the local education and training boards, ETBs. In addition, €114,000 is provided annually to the two centres to help meet the day to day running costs. Almost 1,000 co-operation hours and €47,500 in funding are provided to the Cork Life Centre, which was established by the Christian Brothers in 1996 with the assistance of the Holy Faith Sisters. The centre caters for approximately ten young people between the ages of 12 and 16 years who are out of the mainstream school system. The centre provides a model of high-support educational provision incorporating intensive personal, social and educational support. With the hours allocated, tutors are employed by the Cork Education and Training Board to work in the centre and to deliver tuition in civic, social and political education, reading, literacy, arts and crafts, woodwork and home economics. The annual grant of €47,500 is used to meet day to day running costs of the centre. The centre prepares young people for the junior certificate and other education and training pathways.

In addition to the funding provided to the Cork Life Centre, my Department also funds a range of national programmes catering for early school leavers, such as Youthreach, community training centres and youth encounter projects that are represented in Cork. In Cork city, SOLAS funds 100 Youthreach places in four centres through the Cork Education and Training Board. The Youthreach programme provides two years integrated education, training and work experience for unemployed early school leavers with less than upper second level education who are between 15 and 20 years of age. Also, as part of the Youthreach programme, funding is provided for the Cork City learning support service, which caters for up to 70 young early school leavers aged 12 to 18 years of age. The service provides the junior certificate and some FETAC programmes for learners.

Through SOLAS, my Department provides 155 places in three community training centres which address the training and employment needs of early school leavers, primarily aged between 16 and 21 years. The Matt Talbot adolescent service in Cork provides residential drug and alcohol treatment for 14 to 18 year old boys. It provides educational courses at junior and leaving certificate level, ECDL and FETAC levels 3 and 4. My Department provides €190,000 through Cork Education and Training Board towards the cost of instruction staff at the centre.

My Department also funds the St. Kevin's youth encounter project in Cork, which can accommodate up to 25 children aged 11 to 15 years of age. Children are referred to the school by a number of agencies, including the court system, and mostly come from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, with a multiplicity of problems and issues. The major budgetary pressures within my Department place significant constraints on its capacity to support existing programmes and, consequently, given the significant range of educational disadvantage interventions already supported by my Department, requests for increased funding for the Cork Life Centre simply cannot be considered. Officials of my Department have met on a number of occasions with representatives of the life centres to discuss how the children and young people who avail of the out of school provision provided in the centres might best be supported in the future.

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