Results 11,801-11,820 of 19,032 for speaker:Ruairi Quinn

Seanad: Junior Certificate Reform and the Literacy and Numeracy Strategy: Statements (23 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I thank the 13 Senators who spoke in this debate for their comments and for the general support I have received from Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, the Independents and my Government colleagues. There is much meat in the document, and I will not repeat it now, but I want to focus on literacy and numeracy and then on the actual junior certificate and how it will be rolled out. As Senator Power...

Seanad: Junior Certificate Reform and the Literacy and Numeracy Strategy: Statements (23 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: The NCCA did not reckon it was worth mainstreaming. We hope our primary school teachers, who now study for four years and who are coming from the top 15% of leaving certificate results, will have at least one modern continental language and will be able to teach it as primary school teachers so that we do not need dedicated primary school language teachers. We would like to move in that...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Schools Amalgamation (24 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I am aware that my officials met with the Deputy on Tuesday, 23 October about the matter to which he refers. The Department will now arrange for a technical assessment of the school buildings concerned to be carried out. As was pointed out at the meeting, in view of the need to prioritise available funding for the provision of additional school accommodation, the delivery of major school...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Special Educational Needs (24 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: The National Council for Special Education is responsible through its network of local Special Educational Needs Organisers (SENOs), for allocating resources to schools, including resource teaching support, in order to support children with special educational needs. The NCSE operates within my Department's established criteria for the allocation of such supports and the staffing resources...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Third Level Grant Eligibility (24 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: Students entering postgraduates courses who meet the qualifying conditions for the special rate of grant will be eligible to have their post-graduate tuition fees paid up to the maximum fee limit of €6,270 under the Student Grant Scheme. A further limited number of students who would previously have qualified under the standard grant thresholds will qualify to have a €2,000...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Fee Paying Schools (24 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: The funding to which the Deputy refers, is the arrangement whereby the salaries of teachers employed within the approved annual staffing allocation for fee charging schools by my Department, are paid by the State; an arrangement that pre-dates the introduction of the Free Education scheme and which exists since the foundation of the State. The estimated cost of these posts is in the order of...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Schools Building Projects (24 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: As the Deputy will be aware in June of last year I announced that up to 40 new schools are to be established up to 2017 to cater for increasing demographics across a number of locations. These consisted of twenty new primary schools and twenty new post-primary schools. This announcement did not include a proposal to establish a new primary school in the area referred to by the Deputy....

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Teaching Qualifications (24 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: It is in the public interest that there be an adequate supply of qualified teachers and that supply matches the particular specialisms required. However, even with the best possible systems in place, securing equilibrium between demand and supply is not an exact science, and is subject to quite a number of variables. Recent developments, such as the EU rules on mutual recognition of...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Higher Education Grants (24 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: As the Deputy may be aware, all new applications for the 2012/13 academic year are being processed and paid by SUSI, the new centralised grant awarding authority. Continuing students who are renewing their grant for attendance on an existing course with their existing awarding authority, which will be either a local authority or a VEC, will continue to have their applications processed and...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Third Level Grant Applications (24 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: The decision on eligibility for new student grant applications from the 2012/13 academic year is a matter for the new centralised grant awarding authority, SUSI (Student Universal Support Ireland). Officials in my Department have confirmed with SUSI that documentation was requested from the student referred to by the Deputy in relation to her final course acceptance form. When the...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Schools Building Projects (24 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: The major building project for the school referred to by the Deputy was included in the 5 year plan announced last March. The project is at an early stage of architectural planning and is scheduled under the plan to proceed to construction in 2014/2015. The Stage 1 report (preliminary design) has recently been reviewed by my Department officials and the project has been authorised to...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Staffing (24 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: Each main redeployment panel is created for permanent and CID holding teachers in order to ensure that vacancies in permanent and fixed-term posts are offered in the first instance to these teachers. A secondary and discrete subsidiary of each main redeployment panel, the subsidiary main panel, is created for eligible teachers in fixed term, substitute and part-time posts who meet the...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Special Educational Needs (24 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I wish to advise the Deputy that the enrolment of a child in a school is a matter in the first instance for the parents of the child and the Board of Management of a school. My Department has no role in relation to processing applications for enrolment to schools. The policy of my Department is to secure the maximum possible level of inclusion of students with special educational needs in...

Leaders' Questions (25 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: They are not serious about the issue.

Prospects for Irish Economy: Statements (Resumed) (25 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I listened to the previous speaker's contribution and I would simply state that we have lost our economic sovereignty and that we do not control our own cheque book. There are those on the other side of the House who seem to think that this is some kind of illusion. If we were to go into the international money markets to borrow the money to which the Deputy refers, the rates would make...

Prospects for Irish Economy: Statements (Resumed) (25 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: We can learn from what has happened in this recession. We have to be very clear that we cannot go back to where we were, building houses we did not need for people who could not afford them and pretending we were all getting rich. It was nonsense and a collective mania. I will never forget how it started and the way in which it was asserted.

Prospects for Irish Economy: Statements (Resumed) (25 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: We did not support any of it. The lesson we can usefully learn stems from what happened to a country not unlike our own with a very similar history and on the periphery of Europe - Finland. In 1991-92 when the Berlin wall came down and the Soviet Union economy collapsed, Finland discovered within four to five months that one third of its entire export market which had been based on a system...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Staffing (25 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I propose to take Questions Nos. 71 and 72 together. When the moratorium was introduced the Government exempted Principal and Deputy Principal posts in all primary and post-primary schools and these continue to be replaced in the normal manner. The impact of the moratorium is therefore limited to the Director of Adult Education, Assistant Principal and Special Duties allowances payable to...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Third Level Grant Applications (25 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: The decision on eligibility for new student grant applications from the 2012/13 academic year is a matter for the new centralised grant awarding authority, SUSI (Student Universal Support Ireland). Officials in my Department have confirmed with SUSI that documentation was requested from the student referred to by the Deputy. This was received but was incomplete so further documentation was...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Fee Paying Schools (25 Oct 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: The Deputy will be aware that the issue of subsidies to fee-paying schools is a complex one. The figures provided below show that the overall total cost of exchequer support is €109 million. The Deputy will be aware that I announced a review last December, in the context of the Budget 2012, where I made a further one point change to the staffing allocation of fee charging schools. I...