James Bannon (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Question 475: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if he will clarify the position of a person (details supplied) in County Longford employed under memo V7 in a full time capacity by a school in County Longford, but whose role is being relegated to that of one shared with another area, with half a disadvantaged post also having been withdrawn from the school; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25667/09]

Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)
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Home school community liaison co-ordinator posts are provided on a full-time or shared basis between schools. Due to the nature of the work of home school community liaison co-ordinators, which focuses directly on the salient adults in children's educational lives, co-ordinators must be deployed to full-time liaison duties only. This is to avoid any potential conflict of interest which could arise if such a person were teaching a child while supporting his or her family at the same time. The role also requires the flexibility to be available to families for home visitation, to attend meetings and in-service training and to undertake school staff development without having the restrictions of a timetable. Following a full review of the allocation of home school community liaison posts and clustering arrangements under Delivering Equality of Opportunities in Schools, the Action Plan for Educational Inclusion in 2008, home school community liaison posts are allocated to schools on the basis of their levels of disadvantage and enrolment, having regard to geographic proximity or association — where children from the same family attend different schools, such as boys and girls schools, or have primary or post-primary aged siblings. In a small number of cases, co-ordinators may be shared between schools that do not have family links. This ensures that the co-ordinators are deployed to do home school community liaison duties only. The co-ordinator to whom the Deputy refers is employed as a permanent whole time teacher by a Vocational Education Committee as a full-time home school community liaison co-ordinator. Following the 2008 home school community liaison review, the school in which the co-ordinator is serving is no longer entitled to a full home school community liaison post, based on its size and level of disadvantage. It is sharing a post with another school. The VEC has been advised that the home school community liaison post should be shared between two of its schools. It is a matter for the VEC to deploy this teacher in accordance with the terms of her contract with the VEC.