Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Regarding socially disadvantaged areas, looking at the work done in the past ten to 15 years, have we identified why we have made very little progress in many of these areas? Do we need to focus at an earlier stage, and I am even talking about primary-school level, on starting people off on the process of long-term ambition in education? Are we doing enough in this regard to encourage people to move from first level to second level and then, hopefully, on to third level? When the Minister was in Cork last week, he visited one of the schools in respect of which he placed a major emphasis on apprenticeships. This is important as well. We must, however, do much more in socially disadvantaged areas in particular. How are we going to monitor this progress?

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