Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Carline Learning Centre in Lucan, County Dublin, has been providing a unique educational social care and psychological service to young people for more than 25 years. It works with young people who, for a variety of reasons, are no longer able to remain in mainstream schools. They are often young people with complex needs and issues in their families or in their communities. It provides them with a stable learning environment, first, to try to reintegrate them into mainstream school but also to give them real opportunities in life. The centre has an enormous success rate. In the past year, 17 young people who entered the school completed the junior certificate examination, and 53% of the young people who go through its doors are reintegrated back into education.

The centre's funding situation is precarious but the central problem the three Deputies from the constituency want to raise today is that it does not have access to capital funding. Currently, it has an urgent capital funding need to bring the building up to health and safety standards, and we are urging the Minister and his Department to intervene. I got a reply from the senior Minister recently to a parliamentary question. It was disappointing that he described this service as out-of-school provision. This is a form of school for young people who desperately need the support. The building they are in should meet health and safety standards and we are asking the Minister to work with us to try to resolve the current funding difficulties.

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