Tony Gregory (Dublin Central, Independent)
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Question 472: To ask the Minister for Education and Science further to Parliamentary Question No. 155 of 22 November 2007, if the vocational education committees are responsible to her Department; if the funding they receive comes from her Department's budget; if they are accountable to her Department in regard to the employment of teachers; and if she will request the vocational education committees to issue comprehensive reports to her Department on the number and gender of teachers employed by them. [32236/07]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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There are 33 vocational education committees (VECs) established under the Vocational Education Acts, 1930 to 2001. Each VEC is a statutory body with its own corporate status. The functions and responsibilities of the VECs, including their requirements to report to the Minister for Education and Science, are defined in the governing legislation.

VECs provide a broad range of educational services. In addition to providing post-primary education, further and adult education, they also have responsibilities in areas such as community education, training for early school leavers, basic literacy courses, traveller education and the provision of youth services. My Department provides the majority of the funding required by VECs for the delivery of these programmes.

Under statutory provisions VECs are responsible for the recruitment, appointment and the payment of individual teacher salaries up to the allocation limit as outlined to the VEC by my Department. The type of contract offered to individual teachers whether full time or part time is also a matter for the individual VEC.

In the school year 2006/07 a total of 8,548 whole time equivalent teaching posts were allocated to VECs and funding is made available to VECs to pay this number of teachers.

Statistical returns from VECs indicate that teachers employed by VECs are approximately 62% female and 38% male. A summary of these returns is published in the annual statistical report of my Department.