Liam Fitzgerald (Fianna Fail)

I support the call for a debate on education. Perhaps we might include in that debate the problem of dropping out from school and its links with juvenile crime. Many of the barriers to social inclusion and educational attainment lie outside the school gates. Schools are desperately trying to deal with social issues that are profoundly ingrained. It is naïve in the extreme to regard the National Educational Welfare Board as the panacea to all these ills. Its fundamental function is curative rather than preventive.

With regard to the lacuna or otherwise concerning community based organisations, a whole industry of community based organisations promoting social inclusion is receiving massive funding from the taxpayer comprising a plethora of individual empires and disparate groups, voluntary and statutory. On the other hand we have a home school liaison service, which by all accounts is working extremely effectively. Through the Leader I call for an immediate and thorough evaluation of the effectiveness of all these community based organisations in the context of their individual and collective contribution to social inclusion to be followed immediately by fundamental and appropriate amendments to the Education Welfare Act.