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Opening Statement by the Minister for Education and Skills Select Committee on Education and Skills, 12 December 2019 _______ Vote 26 – Supplementary Estimate 2019 ________ CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY A Chathaoirligh agus a Bhaill den Choiste (Chair, members of the Committee,) Ba mhaith liom mo bhuiochas a ghabháil libh go léir don deis a thabhair dom bheith anseo libh.

Liomsa, tá oifigigh ó mo Roinn.


Thank you for opportunity to speak to you this morning and for the Committee’s consideration of my Department’s Supplementary Estimate.

Following approval by the Government, my Department is seeking a net Supplementary Estimate of €68 million.

This is the lowest Supplementary requirement from my Department in recent years.

It represents a variation on the Department’s overall net allocation for 2019 of less than 0.7%.
My Department has provided detailed briefing on this Supplementary Estimate, but I will briefly outline the key elements for the information of the Committee.

There is an additional pay requirement in the school sector of €52.3 million, across a number of subheads.

For context, the pay allocation for the schools sector is over €5.3 billion in 2019, so this represents a variation of around 1%.
The main drivers of the additional demand are in the areas of substitution, additional costs for teacher supply initiatives, demographics and some technical issues in the ETB sector.

An additional €19.9 million is required for school transport in 2019.

Around 90% of the additional cost relates to the provision of transport for children with special educational needs, which has been the main cost driver in the scheme over recent years.
The remaining 10% relates to general costs, in areas such as increasing fuel costs and demographic increases.

An additional €9.9 million is being sought for the State Examinations Commission.

As members of the Committee know well, the SEC is responsible for the development, assessment, accreditation and certification of the State’s second-level examinations.
The Commission was required to incur a range of additional costs in 2019, in large part due to the need to implement changes to the marking process to facilitate earlier Leaving Cert appeals timelines, as a result of a High Court judgement.
€7 million is sought to cover additional expenditure over allocation in the rental of temporary accommodation due to a higher level of approvals required to meet immediate school accommodation needs along with €1m contingency for some uncertainties over the level of rental approvals before the year-end.

€0.4 million is sought to cover the knock-on costs in the education and training sector of the Government’s Decision to award a Christmas Bonus payment to recipients of social protection payments.
A number of participants on SOLAS- funded further education and training programmes are in receipt of a training allowance in lieu of their Department of Social Protection benefits and the Government has made a decision that these participants will also receive a Christmas bonus.

The final issue on the expenditure side is €9 million to provide for the knock-on costs in the higher education sector of a pay deal which was agreed in the health sector for medical consultants.
This will cover the cost of pay arrears which are due to be paid to academic medical consultants.

An estimated surplus of €31.5 million in Appropriations-in-Aid is being factored in to the 2019 Supplementary Estimate to offset these expenditure pressures.

The Department has received additional receipts of €39.1m in European Social Fund over the amounts profiled for 2019.
These additional receipts are reduced slightly by a shortfall in superannuation receipts of €7.6 million, as a result of technical issues regarding the treatment of these receipts.

I’m happy to discuss these issues in more detail, and I commend the Supplementary Estimate to the Committee.

Go raibh maith agaibh agus táim réidh le haon ceisteanna ón gCoiste a fhreagairt.

Thank you.