Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 81: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he will explain the changes contained in a recent circular sent to schools that state certain clarifications will have to be made before home school liaison co-ordinator posts are filled for the forthcoming year; and if he will give a commitment that he will not make further cutbacks to the HSLC posts. [14659/11]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The current provision of Home School Community Liaison (HSCL) Services will remain in the 200 post primary and 345 urban primary schools participating in DEIS.

The process of allocating teaching resources to schools for the 2011/12 school year and the arrangements for filling vacant or new teaching positions takes place in the context of the Programme for National Recovery, the EU/IMF Programme of Support for Ireland and the Public Service Agreement 2010-2014. It is necessary for my Department to exercise additional control and reporting measures this year to ensure that the number of teachers employed in schools is consistent with those programmes. Schools can only fill their vacancies from the surplus permanent and CID holding teachers. It is not possible to permit schools to fill vacancies in any other manner until the surplus permanent teachers are redeployed.

Schools with HSCL coordinator vacancies were requested to hold off making new appointments. Although HSCL coordinator appointments are made internally from among the staff of schools, the filling of the replacement post for the teacher deployed to undertake HSCL duties may have implications in relation to panel arrangements.

Given that there are currently 248 surplus permanent and CID holding teachers remaining on panels my Department will not decide until 10 June 2011 (at the earliest) in relation to giving schools authority to commence recruitment in any other manner. My Department may decide at that stage to prioritise schools that have fully cooperated with the redeployment process.

Discussions with the relevant education partners also include devising whatever additional arrangements are necessary to facilitate the redeployment of any remaining permanent and CID holding teachers (including 21 surplus permanent teachers that do not currently have access to a redeployment panel).