John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Question 544: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the funding made by her Department to provide assistance for homeless people here; the total of all such funding in each of the years 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [5421/06]

Síle de Valera (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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My Department supports a number of initiatives that provide assistance, directly or indirectly, for the homeless. Under the special projects for youth scheme, grant-in-aid is made available to a number of organisations and groups for specific projects which seek to address the needs of young people who are disadvantaged due to a number of factors, including homelessness.

Projects are administered on the ground, largely by grant administering agencies which include vocational education committees and national and major regional youth organisations. There are 177 projects in receipt of funding under this scheme. Focus Ireland, with a particular outreach focus, receives funding under the scheme via the City of Dublin Youth Services Board-City of Dublin VEC. The funding received supports three areas of work: street outreach, the extension day centre and an education project. The allocations in respect of Focus Ireland for the last four years were as follows:

The further education section of my Department also provided funding for City of Dublin VEC from 2002 to 2005 for a homeless project in Dublin city. Programmes are run both on-site for homeless services with programmes in place in hostels, B&Bs and day services, and in City of Dublin VEC education centres. This is part of the integrated strategy on homelessness and City of Dublin VEC is working in partnership with the homeless services and other agencies to increase the access to education for those who are homeless. Programmes are available for single people and also for special needs groups and are run on weekdays, weekends and evenings. The allocations made for this purpose were as follows:

My Department is also involved in an interdepartmental initiative: the youth homeless strategy monitoring committee. From an education perspective, the Department of Education and Science is directly involved in the education and training sub-group which concentrates on the educational needs of homeless youth.