Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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334. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the net and gross annual saving to the Exchequer if VEC chief executive officers salaries were capped at €100,000. [34481/13]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The Deputy will be aware that, on 1st July 2013, the 33 VECs were replaced by 16 Education and Training Boards (ETBs). Accordingly, I propose to answer the Deputy's question by reference to the Chief Executives of the ETBs.

There are three categories of ETBs for the purposes of pay scales for Chief Executives. Based on the mid point of these scales, my Department estimates that the gross annual saving to the Exchequer, were pay for the Chief Executives to be capped at €100,000, is of the order of €144,000.

As Chief Executives are employees of and paid by the ETBs, information relating to the net saving is not available.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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335. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the annual saving to the Exchequer if current state subsidies to private schools were withdrawn; if he will provide a single figure and not a list of schools with accompanying figures. [34482/13]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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In December 2011 I announced that an analysis of fee income in the 55 fee charging schools would be carried out. This was in order to inform future policy decisions about the nature and extent of exchequer funding provided to fee charging schools.

The report published in January 2013 is an analysis of the funding position of the 55 schools which charge fees; it is not an audit. It shows the funds available to these schools through charging fees, which are not available to secondary schools in the Free Scheme.

The Report shows that fee charging schools have a discretionary income of €81.3m that would not be available to similar sized schools (i.e. size as determined by enrolment) in the free scheme.

The Report is available at