John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection his plan to make further cuts to the back to education allowance. [51672/12]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Back to Education Allowance (BTEA) is a second chance education opportunities scheme. It is designed to remove the barriers to participation in second and third level education by enabling those in receipt of certain social welfare payments to continue to receive a payment while pursuing an approved full-time education course that leads to a higher qualification than that already held. The BTEA scheme covers a large range of full-time courses of education in approved colleges, spanning basic foundation courses to third level courses across all disciplines. Expenditure on the Scheme in 2012 is expected to be of the order of €200 million.

As the Deputy will appreciate, managing expenditure demands for 2013 and beyond poses difficult challenges and requires a critical analysis of all expenditure items. As part of the preparations for the forthcoming Budget, the Government is considering the resources available to meet expenditure demands across the various schemes and services delivered by the Department in 2013. The outcome of these deliberations and the resources to be made available to BTEA will be announced as part of the Budget.