Results 1-12 of 12 for like to work segment:8927055

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Ms Bernie McNally: I thank the Chair and committee members for the invitation to discuss our appropriation account and some particular topics the committee has chosen. Although the Chair introduced the officials, I will give their names again and their areas of responsibility in order that members will be clear on that. At assistant secretary general level, Mr. Hubert Loftus is head of...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

John Brady: Ms McNally said that planning has worked, but it has not. It has failed. Forward planning has fundamentally failed. Wicklow is one example of that but there are many other examples across the State. I will quickly read a letter I got from a pupil in Wicklow only this Monday. It is very brief and says: Hello, my name is [I am not going to give his name, for obvious reasons] and I go to...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Ms Bernie McNally: The planning system is working, overall. As I mentioned, for 314 school planning areas, there are, typically, less than ten areas where there are problems. Most children and young people across the country get a school place. They may not always get their first place or first preference, but they will get a school in their locality. I am not saying that we have it...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Catherine Murphy: ...hall as a consequence of being accommodated in prefabs. There is somewhere in the region of €400,000 per year being spent on security for the site. It looks from the outside and from a distance like the school is complete, but it is the fit-out and the internal work that need to be done. When does the Department expect the school to be open? Are there other situations where...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Ms Bernie McNally: I will answer the question on the summer programme. We will look at the specific school transport issue raised and come back to the Deputy. We have significantly reduced the number of issues with special education transport. The summer programme is important for children, young people and their families. We have put a huge amount of time and investment into it. We...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

...country. I will focus on DEIS in a minute. As the Deputy will be aware, there are children with disadvantage in schools that do not have DEIS status. A number of services and supports are put into them, things like reducing the average class size to 23 over a number of budgets, 2,000 extra English-as-an-additional-language teachers going out into the system, DEIS and non-DEIS. A number...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

James O'Connor: I will extend an invitation. It would be good for Department officials to go there. I realise it is an unprecedented request to civil servants at a committee meeting, but it would be good to go down and see what it is like for one urban centre to have major accommodation centres for people – now asylum seekers – and how this impacts the schools, and also see the good work...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Brian Stanley: We cannot have such a situation. I welcome the commitment Mr. Loftus has made in respect of small and large projects. It is important that unannounced and regular checks take place. Clerks of works in local authorities are like busy bees. They go around and call unannounced regularly, sometimes on a daily basis, to check stuff. It is so important for the quality of work. Local authority...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Ms Bernie McNally: We have two systems. We have a system in Blanchardstown that is our ETB shared services and then we have our Athlone payroll for everyone else. The ETB shared services were ahead in their IT projects. The Athlone IT system was bigger and more arduous. There have been learnings. The OGP had a big tender like that fail as well. Many of the IT companies now want us to...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Ms Martina Mannion: The programme the Deputy referred to as July provision used to be a programme that was run for a month. Schools said they were struggling to find capacity to do it for a month and it is for that reason we brought it back to two weeks. We want schools to do it for two weeks because of the challenges in setting up the provision, getting the staff and getting it to work...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Brian Stanley: I will raise the conditions in the two ASD modular units at Barrowhouse National School in which the principal, teachers and other staff are working. The units were held up for years because the school was told to get a design team and do the work and preparation itself. That went on for years. Then the units were delayed and the Department of Education stepped in and told the school to...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Catherine Murphy: We know Caranua was a finite organisation and it has completed its work. There are, however, still a small number of outstanding clients. There is one particular gentleman in Limerick who had a builder walk out of the site and it has been a building site for the past few years. Are there others like that? When do the witnesses expect to have in place the legislation needed to wind Caranua...