The Supplementary Estimates for the Education and Science group of Votes, which total £192.492 million, are required for the year 2000. The net amounts required for each Vote are Vote 26, Office of the Minister for Education and Science, £107,000; Vote 27, First Level Education, £49.75 million; Vote 28, Second Level and Further Education, £95.4 million and Vote 29, Third Level and Further Education, £47.235 million.
These Supplementary Estimates arise mainly for the following reasons. I intend to arrange for an early payment of capitation grants for primary and secondary schools in respect of the 2000-01 school year. These payments would normally be made in January/February of next year. Capitation grants totalling almost £38 million will be paid before Christmas to improve the cash flow of schools, many of which incurred higher than usual costs in recent months. The standard primary capitation grant, which stood at £45 in 1997, has increased to £71 per pupil in the current year and will be further increased to £80 per pupil for the next school year. At second level, the capitation grant has increased from £177 in 1997 to £192 for the current year and to £202 for the next school year. These developments will make a significant contribution towards improving the financial position of schools.
I wish to make an additional £17 million available in capital funding for second level schools in the current year to maintain the momentum of improvement in this sector. This will bring the allocation to over £120 million this year. This is a four fold increase over the 1997 Estimate allocation provided for by the previous Government and enables major progress to be made in developing and modernising second level school buildings.
A total of £8 million is required for the purchase of ten acres of additional land by Dublin City University to enable it to expand the research element of its activity which cannot be accommodated within its existing campus. There will be matching funding for the site purchase from private sources.
An additional sum of £5.8 million is required to meet the cost of extra special needs assistants in primary schools. Since taking office, the Government has undertaken an unprecedented level of development in special education services. The Government decision is ensuring that all children with special needs within the primary system now have an automatic entitlement to a response appropriate to their disability and location. More than 1,400 special needs posts have been sanctioned to date under this new policy.
I am seeking an extra provision of £4.5 million mainly to fund the cost of additional resource teacher posts and to provide teacher posts for the primary education of children of foreign nationals, refugees and asylum seekers. I introduced a new scheme in February of this year for this purpose to cater for each group of 15 pupils with significant English language deficits. Additional resource posts are allocated to schools where there are a number of pupils with identified special needs. The posts are now allocated on demand and it is not possible to forecast with accuracy the number of such posts that will be required in each school year.
An additional £2 million is required to fund improvements to the first level caretaker/clerical assistance schemes. At primary level, my Department provides funding towards the cost of secretarial and caretaking services under two separate schemes. One scheme is the 1978-79 scheme for the employment of school secretaries and caretakers under which my Department meets the full cost of salary and employer's PRSI. However, this scheme was superseded in the PESP Agreement of 1992 by a more extensive grant scheme.
The PESP scheme provides additional per capita grants for primary schools towards secretarial and caretaking services. Under this scheme, qualifying schools receive grants of £40 per pupil — £20 per pupil in respect of each service — subject to a maximum of £20,000 per annum — a maximum of £10,000 in respect of each service. These grants are paid as additions to the standard per capita grants The scheme, by its nature, is flexible and gives boards of management discretion on the manner in which secretarial and caretaking services are to be provided.
I increased the rates of grant by 33 % from £30 per pupil to £40 per pupil with effect from January this year. Furthermore, with effect from September of this year, I extended the scheme to all primary schools. In addition, I have set a minimum grant of £2,400 per annum which is payable to all schools with 60 pupils or fewer. These improvements mean that, with effect from September 2000, all primary schools will receive an annual grant to assist them with the provision of secretarial and caretaking services. The Government's commitment in this regard can also be measured by the fact that the funding allocated for this purpose, which was approximately £5.6 million in 1999, has increased this year to approximately £12.2 million and will further increase in 2001 to approximately £16.8 million.
A total of £8 million is sought under subhead F — Other Grants and Services — of the first level Vote mainly to enable me to provide, among other things, for a special grant to all primary schools for the development of the arts in the curriculum. Within the same subhead, Vote 27 — First Level Education — £1.4 million is required to meet the increased costs of providing grants to schools which rent temporary accommodation. The rate of grant was increased significantly last year. The remainder of the requirement sought for subhead F of the First Level Education Vote is needed to fund increased costs in the substance misuse programme, extra costs in the Early Start programme and additional expenditure on grants to certain disadvantaged schools.
I am seeking an additional £2 million in the second level Vote for subhead K to meet the cost of special grant allocations for an ICT project for children with special needs in second level schools. The project will provide state of the art technology for selected areas of disability where this is available and will focus particularly on computer assisted technology for pupils with dyslexia.
A considerable element of the Supplementary Estimate provision sought relates mainly to technical factors involving demand led expenditure subheads and appropriations-in-aid. An additional provision of £10.85 million is required for the teacher pension subheads due to considerably increased numbers of retirements and for technical accounting factors related to the earlier payment date in December for teacher pensions.
There are shortfalls in the third level free fees provision, mainly due to increased enrolments, and there are unanticipated additional superannuation costs in respect of third level institutions, the Dublin Dental Hospital and Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann. I am also providing in these Supplementary Estimates for the funding of pensions for former Carysfort staff who are now working in the third level sector.
The receipts from the European Social Fund, now projected to be received by my Department as appropriations-in-aid for Vote 28 and Vote 29 before the end of 2000, are approximately £88 million lower than originally estimated. The Supplementary Estimates rectify this shortfall, which is due principally to administrative delays within the EU Commission.
The publication of the Abridged Estimates for 2001 and the budgetary process for next year have, as Deputies will be aware, already resulted in my Department being in a position to implement further significant improvements to the benefit of all levels of education. These Supplementary Estimates show that during this year additional funding has been allocated, beyond an already generous provision, and has been targeted at a number of welcome developments. The Government has made education a top priority for its term of office and these Supplementary Estimates are further evidence of its commitment to the sector. They underpin an unprecedented level of funding for developing and improving current and capital provision and they allow for substantially increased allocations for pupils with special needs.
The additional activities for which the Supplementary Estimates will provide will serve as an excellent foundation for further improvements which we will be able to implement over the coming year. I commend the Supplementary Estimates to the committee.