Results 8,761-8,780 of 19,032 for speaker:Ruairi Quinn

Third Level Courses (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: We should examine Skillnets and the Finuas financial services programme.

Third Level Courses (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: There are vacancies in this sector that cannot be filled. Some of them are being filled by people who are coming from other jurisdictions. That does not make sense at a time when we have a good pool of talented and educated people in the labour market who might not have the specific skills that are required in certain sectors. We should put transition programmes in place very close to the...

Third Level Courses (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: Yes.

Third Level Courses (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I will examine what the Deputy has suggested.

Special Educational Needs (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I propose to take Questions Nos. 7 and 22 together. The National Council for Special Education is responsible for allocating special needs assistants to schools to support children with special educational needs. The council operates within my Department's established criteria for the allocation of such supports and within the staffing resources available to my Department. All schools,...

Special Educational Needs (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I know of the Deputy's interest in this matter. I will confine my remarks to Scoil Mhuire. I can send information on the other school to the Deputy in written form if he wishes. I know we are facing time constraints. There are 45 teachers and 17.75 special assistants at Scoil Mhuire, which had an enrolment of 559 pupils on 30 September 2010. The school's three classes for children with...

Special Educational Needs (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: Yes, they did.

Special Educational Needs (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I have heard what the Deputy has suggested and I will take it into consideration.

School Accommodation (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: There are five primary schools in the Virginia feeder area. While enrolments have increased over the past decade, my Department has projected that future enrolments will remain relatively stable up to 2018. The current enrolment at St. Mary's is 380 pupils, up from 350 in 2007, so, while enrolment levels have been growing at the school, they have increased by less than 10% over the last...

School Accommodation (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: Okay.

School Accommodation (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: Yes.

School Accommodation (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I will be happy to meet the Deputy and others in that constituency. There has been a population explosion in the Virginia area because of the outer reach of the commuter belt of Dublin and all the rest. There are certain factors which are, shall we say, not normal and I would be happy to look at it in that broader sense. I recognise there is a problem which, if not necessarily unique, is...

School Accommodation (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I invite the Deputy to try to address those, shall we say, statistical deficits because there are anomalies, as I heard at the time. If that information can be improved or clarified in terms of its accuracy, we will see what that produces. I am sympathetic to the Deputy's point because I have seen this at first hand.

Schools Building Projects (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I propose to take Questions Nos. 9 and 38 together. The five-year plan is not discriminatory against second level gaelcholáistí. I advise the Deputy that there are ten major building projects included in the five-year plan for post-primary schools delivering tuition through the medium of Irish. In June last year I announced a new process and criteria for the establishment of new second...

Schools Building Projects (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I recognise what the Deputy is saying and refer to my earlier response. There is more in the pipeline now in terms of gaelcholáistí at second level than was previously the case. The future for the provision of Irish-medium teaching in both the primary and secondary sector is quite healthy. The difficulty, as the Deputy rightly pointed out, is that the catchment area, by definition, is...

Religious and Sexual Discrimination (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: The programme for Government states that people of non-faith or minority religious backgrounds and publicly identified LGBT people should not be deterred from training or taking up employment as teachers in the State. Accordingly, when Senator Power introduced a Bill to the Seanad, I was happy to see if it could form the basis for an all-party approach. I raised the matter with my colleague...

Religious and Sexual Discrimination (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: We are all ad idem on this and I commend the work Senator Averil Power did in the Seanad in this regard. There are complexities around this issue because the Bill it is proposed to amend was referred to the Supreme Court in the first instance and so has the stamp of constitutionality, which is unusual for legislation. Therefore, we are advised legally that we must be extremely careful in...

Religious and Sexual Discrimination (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I will be happy to try to do that.

Pupil-Teacher Ratios (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: Some 73 small primary schools were originally due to lose classroom teachers in September 2012 as a result of the budget measure to increase the relevant pupil-teacher thresholds. The staffing appeals board considered appeals from all of the 73 schools that could demonstrate their projected enrolments for September 2012 were sufficient to allow them retain their classroom teachers over the...

Pupil-Teacher Ratios (24 May 2012)

Ruairi Quinn: I am sympathetic to the Deputy's argument. The phrase generally used is "small rural schools" but the official terminology refers to the two categories of "schools" and "small schools". There are small schools with as few as two teachers in Dublin and other urban areas, which is nonsense. The value for money report, which is assessing approximately 600 schools with 50 or fewer pupils, has...