Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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545. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills her views on the introduction of cluster policies for small schools as set out in the Irish Primary Principals' Network's report entitled New Horizons for Smaller Schools. [5997/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Ireland has a high number of primary schools by international standards and a high number of these schools are small schools. The report to which the Deputy refers was produced ten years ago in 2005. It proposed that additional resources be allocated to small primary schools that were willing to engage in a cluster, including the appointment of a cluster co-ordinator. In the period since the report was written, the country has experienced record birth rates and this has required prioritising the provision of significant additional places at all levels of the education system, in a period of scarce resources. My Department therefore has no plans to allocate additional resources to facilitate clusters of small schools in the manner proposed in the report in question.