Noel Coonan (Fine Gael)

Ba mhaith liom céad míle fáilte a chur roimh an Aire Stáit. I was not prepared for the Minister of State's lap of honour but I wish to be associated with the tributes paid to her and to wish her well in whatever future career she decides to take. The Minister of State has been paid lavish tributes and I have no doubt they were well deserved and I endorse them. Senator White referred to bouquets. I hope I will not add guns to the roses she is offering.

My experience of the Government's programme for further education is that the Department of Education and Science is bogged down in bureaucracy in the delivery of the programme. The Department appears to have no problem in dealing with the primary, secondary and higher levels of education but faces an insurmountable barrier in dealing with further education, or céim eile, which overlaps more than one level. I will give the House an illustration of this from my town of Templemore.

In 2000 the VEC and the religious orders which were delivering education in Templemore came together and decided to form a community college and transform St. Sheelan's, the existing VEC college, into a college of further education. The principal of the school wrote as follows to the Minister for Education and Science:

St. Sheelan's needs to be refurbished and extended in order to accommodate the growing number of students it gets every year. The classrooms need to increase in size. There is no proper car park and no canteen facilities. There is no library or study facilities, which the college needs, and students have nowhere to study or to carry out research.

After the amalgamation, refurbishment plans to accommodate 75 further education places were submitted to the Department in 2001. In 2002 enrolment numbers outstripped expectations and a request was made to the Department for a revised schedule of accommodation and for a meeting with the planning and further education units in the Department to agree on the size of the college. That meeting has not yet taken place and the building programme is not even under consideration. In 2006, the college's application for a once-off refurbishment grant was refused on the basis that the college needs an extension.

This is an account of six years' progress in further education under the Government's stewardship and of what is being offered to further education in my area. Will the Minister of State raise this matter with the Department to get it to respond? The case of St. Sheelan's college is an indication of the failure in the delivery of the further education service.

The same can be said of the Youthreach programme. The buildings and facilities provided to this programme leave much to be desired. Youthreach groups play a valuable role in education and should be encouraged. Listening to the Minister of State and to some of the speakers today one would think everything in adult education was satisfactory. That is far from being the case.

A Senator referred to programmes which cater for those who slip through the net. I recently heard of a student who was expelled from college a few months before his leaving certificate examination. The family of that student received very little understanding from officials of the Department or from those who deliver education. The student was expelled in October and no service has been offered to the family since then. The VEC in north Tipperary declined to deal with me unless I put everything in writing. Is this the kind of service the Government is offering to the people?

The success of further education depends on the enthusiasm and initiative of the person who is the driving force behind the delivery of the service at college level. The attitude of such a person often makes the difference between success and failure or between success and indifference. St. Sheelan's college is fortunate in having an excellent principal, Mr. Dan Condron.

This brings me to another aspect of further education, which is more in my line, agricultural education. Tipperary Institute together with St. Sheelan's College established a pilot project, New Futures Group, which deals with training, re-skilling and up-skilling for the agricultural community and particularly farmers. As the Minister of State knows, only 20% of the farming community are full-time farmers, which means many of the rest of them need to seek off-farm employment, for which training is very important. The New Futures Group came to an end owing to lack of funding. However, it produced an excellent report and its representatives appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture and Food to outline the difficulties, one of which was lack of funding to continue courses. The main problem with the farming group is the changeover from farming to study. The problem was that unless it is a report delivered by Teagasc no funding is provided. For example, a person who went on to the institute in Athlone needed to pay €2,500 while the fees for those who came through FÁS or industry were paid. This does not represent equal play.

The area of school transport, for which the Minister of State has direct responsibility, needs to be reviewed. I contacted Department of Education and Science officials a week ago with some examples of school transport issues. Four weeks before Christmas these issues are still not resolved, which is not acceptable. I gave full details and have yet to receive a reply. I ask the Minister of State to investigate the matter.