Department chief warned cuts could reduce participation in education system

The secretary general of the Department of Education warned in a private letter prior to the budget that planned cuts could impact on the numbers entering the education system.

The 2014 budget published last October ended up cutting spending on education by €33 million and included reductions for third-level colleges, as well as supports for people participating in further education programmes.

In a letter to the Department of Public Expenditure in June last year, Seán Ó Foghlú, the secretary general of the Department of Education, said saving options being proposed could have serious consequences.

“. . . It will be clear that decisions by the Government to proceed with implementation of many of them will be very difficult, given their potential to impact on participation in education, on the fabric of the education system and on contribution to economic and social development,” he wrote.

“The securing of further savings in the education area has to be viewed against the backdrop that, including savings introduced in Budget 2013, the total savings on education over the past five years approximates to a very significant €1.1 billion.”

The letter, released under the Freedom of Information Act, envisaged spending cuts of about €44 million. However, the actual cuts were just over €10 million less than this as a result of unstated cost-saving measures from within the department’s existing resources.

Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn later said that he had managed to “protect frontline education services” and secured additional teachers and supports for special education.

The document also provides detailed arguments around why these cost-cutting measures [see panel] were being proposed.

In the case of the abolition of the €20 bonus payment, for example, briefing documents state that the payment dated from a time when it was considered an incentive to encourage long-term unemployed to enter the education system. “However, the context has radically changed and the rationale for this payment is very much reduced,” the document states.

The move would impact on an estimated 6,500 course participants in a full year.

The move to ensure Fás apprentices pay student charges worth about €540 was justified on the basis that it was “unlikely to impact on recruitment or cause exits from apprenticeship”.

The decision to cease multiple welfare payments for participants on Fás training courses was justified given that there was “broad agreement” for such a move. It noted that a recipient of the one-parent family payment who also received a Fás training allowance could receive up to €366 per week. Under the proposed changes, this would fall to €220 per week.

The justification for the €25 million cut to higher education was redacted. However, documents state that previous cuts of this order were on the basis that third-level bodies protected frontline services by “deploying existing levels of cash balances”.