If it is agreeable to the House, I wish to share my time with Deputy Flaherty, my constituency colleague, who is also concerned about this matter.
Adjournment Debate. - Ballymun (Dublin) Youth Encounter Project.
Is that request agreed to? Agreed.
In 1980 the present Tánaiste, Minister for Education at the time, pointed out in the White Paper then brought before the House that education must try to meet the needs of the individual and the needs of society. It is clear that at present our educational system does not meet the needs of all of our children. Certainly it does not fully meet the needs of society when it fails those children. It has to be stressed that the failure is not that of the children themselves but of the system. At the moment an estimated 70 children in the Ballymun area are at risk, having already dropped out of school or it being thought that they might drop out of school before finishing.
An investment in a proper rescue system, whereby these children who do not fit into the standard educational system, would provide them with a more flexible way of learning and socialising. In the vast majority of cases these children will end up before our courts and in health or corrective institutions. The cost of establishing a project, such as the youth encounter project to which I referred, would be more than repaid over the years in savings which could be made by not having these children in our institutions.
We cannot approach this purely from the point of view of cost, there is also a human dimension. These children face a life of misery, not just for themselves but also for those people whose lives they touched — their immediate family or others. It is, therefore, essential that the Departments of Education, Health and Justice should address this problem as a matter of urgency. It is estimated that it costs something like £60,000 to keep a child in Trinity House for one year. That kind of investment in the early, formative stages of a child's life would save vast sums of money for the State.
These problems are not confined to the Ballymun area. I am sure Deputies could nominate other areas around the country which would also benefit from these projects. I am talking about a situation where there would be a fairly flexible approach to the children concerned, bearing in mind that they probably come from homes which are — to put it at its mildest — disadvantaged. There is a necessity for a project which would have a very low pupil-teacher ratio, in the region of eight to one, where there would not only be teachers but welfare and health workers and other people available to maintain and develop liaison with the families. We are talking about innocent victims, they are not bad people, and we should not simply ignore them until they come to the attention of the courts and then put them into institutions. We should invest now in providing them with the potential for a decent living.
I thank my colleague, Deputy De Rossa, for sharing his time with me and you, a Cheann Comhairle, for giving us the opportunity to raise this matter. There is a very serious drop-out problem in the Ballymun schooling system which I am sure is reflected throughout the country. It has also emerged in other areas in our constituency. The consequences are obviously an enormous cost to the individuals and to the State in the long — and indeed the short — term. At present when those children drop out, the existing school attendance services do their best but the system is so hostile to the young people concerned that they — and indeed their families — do everything they can to avoid getting back into it. We have had experience in the Finglas area of a very successful youth encounter project. It has worked by identifying and targeting young people and has kept them in a very flexible school environment, otherwise some of them might have been engaged in crime and would have had an early brush with the law.
A project or proposal for the Ballymun area was put to a former Minister in 1988-89 but it seems to have been allowed to lie in the Department as there has not been an active response. I urge the Minister to reactivate its proposals, to support it and to make sure that this great need in the community is met in the very near future.
I should like to thank the Deputies for raising this matter and giving me the opportunity to clarify the position. The youth encounter projects were first established in 1977, initially on a pilot basis, to provide education facilities for children who had become alienated from the conventional school system, are persistent truants and have become involved in, or are at risk of becoming involved in minor crime and delinquency.
There are four recognised projects operating at present, each of which cater for about 25 pupils aged between ten to 15 years located at Rutland Street and Finglas in Dublin, and one each in Cork and Limerick. An additional youth encounter project type facility was established on a temporary basis at Seville Place, Dublin 1, in 1982 to cater for a particular group of youths at risk in that area.
The primary objective of the youth encounter projects is to rehabilitate the pupils and to return them to the conventional school system in the shortest possible time. It is not the intention that the projects develop into an alternative system of education. Therefore, the projects are required to liaise closely with specified schools in their catchment areas, involving schools at both first and second levels.
In addition to having "above quota" teachers, the projects also have the benefit of additional resources such as a community worker and a "bean a tí"; as well as clerical, maintenance, cleaning and security staff. This enables the projects to provide a comprehensive life-skills programme in addition to the normal curriculum.
A major review and evaluation of the existing youth encounter projects is currently underway and will be concluded later this year. The purpose of this review is to evaluate the performance of the youth encounter projects in terms of their success as vehicles for enhancing the learning and living experiences of youths at risk, and generally to establish if the youth encounter projects are adequately meeting the need for which they were established.
Until the evaluation and review has been completed and the findings considered by my Department, no firm decision can be made as to the future direction of these projects or the question of an expansion of the current scheme. Furthermore, in considering the request to establish a new youth encounter project for any area, a thorough examination would have to take place in order to determine the actual needs and extent of disadvantage of the children in the area and decide an appropriate response to those needs. It may well be the case that the problems manifested could be best addressed by measures targeted through the existing schools in the area.
In this connection, the House will be aware of the programme of assistance to direct additional resources to areas of particular socio-economic need. As part of this programme additional funding and ex-quota teachers are provided to schools in areas designated as disadvantaged. In the particular case of Ballymun, I would point out that ten primary schools in the area are already included in the disadvantaged area scheme and, as such, are granted extra funding to go towards the running costs of the schools as well as for books and equipment and home school, community liaison initiatives. Under this scheme, the ten schools have been given 11 ex-quota concessionary posts. In addition to the special measures already mentioned, five of these schools also enjoy the services of local home, school, community liaison co-ordinators.
The home, school, community liaison co-ordinators act in support of local schools in establishing contact with parents, encouraging parents to become involved in their children's education, organising locally based activities which contribute to closer contact between parents and teachers and establishing links with pre-school and other voluntary and statutory groups in the area. This scheme, which was originally introduced on a pilot basis in 1990, is having a very positive impact to date and has been extended to the other post-primary sector. I understand that one of the Ballymun post-primary schools will be included in the schemes for the next school year.
Apart from the initiatives targeted specifically at schools, my Department also provide considerable funding for projects under a grants scheme to disadvantaged youth. Among the projects that benefit substantially from this scheme are — Ballymun youth action project; Ballymun youth service project and Ballymun foróige project.
In effect, therefore, it can be seen that a significant level of additional resources in both funding and extra staffing are already targeted on the Ballymun area. The question of the need for further such resources addressing the needs of this area will be kept under review in the context of the evaluation of the youth encounter project approach to which I have already referred. Deputies will be kept informed of progress.