Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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765. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of annual subscriptions to external membership bodies and groups her Department has, including the cost and details. [46759/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The tabular statement contains the information requested by the Deputy. The tabular statement gives details of the Professional Bodies, the number of staff concerned and the cost of subscriptions in 2015.

Membership details

1. Department of Finance Circular 27/2001 provides for the reimbursement to staff by Departments of professional membership fees. The policy of this Department is that staff may apply for a reimbursement in respect of one professional body only providing the membership is necessary for the performance of an officer's official duties. e.g., where there is a legal requirement that the officer be on the register of a professional body or association or that the membership of the body forms part of the officer’s employment contract.

2. The payment to PSI is a professional membership payment on behalf of 117 NEPS Psychologists. The single group payment enables the Department to avail of a 10% discount on the total cost of the individual memberships and significantly reduces the number of individual reimbursement payments issuing to staff from the unit.

3. Subscriptions are made to Legal Island which provides regular updates in relation to employment law for officials in Human Resources.

4. The payment to EBSCO allows staff access to an electronic database of specialist journals and articles for use by the professional staff of the Inspectorate (Education Research Complete) and NEPS (Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection) and is necessary for their work. The payment relates to a 2 year subscription which runs from 01/12/2015 to 31/11/2017.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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766. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of annual subscriptions to newspapers or magazines her Department has, including the cost and details. [46760/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Information in respect of payments made by my Department for the purchase of newspapers or magazines have been extracted from the Department's Financial Management System (FMS). Total expenditure in 2015 was €8,959.58.

The details of publications purchased are in the table.

LIST OF CURRENT PUBLICATIONS