Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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319. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the net saving of withdrawing the annual State subsidy to private schools. [35826/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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My Department paid €80,185,517.84 gross salaries to teachers in fee-charging schools in the 2015/2016 school year. The capital expenditure for fee-charging schools in 2016 was €53,551.28.

Clearly if the parents of 25,282 children in the fee charging sector chose to send their children to the non-fee-paying sector, the state would have to fund those school places. In this respect, the figures quoted relate to the gross cost of fee charging schools and not the net cost. Since it is impossible to predict the pattern of behaviour it is not possible to calculate the net saving. Suffice to say it would be significantly less than the gross figures quoted.