THE Minister for Education has announced the establishment of a inter departmental working group to consider the recommendations of a report which urges the Government to aim for the total elimination of early school leaving by 2002.
Ms Breathnach was speaking at the launch of the latest report from the National Economic and Social Forum, on early schoolleavers and youth unemployment.
Among a range of proposals, the NESF recommends a number of immediate steps to be taken this year, including reducing the number of students leaving school before taking the Junior Certificate by 600 and adding 1,000 participants to the Youthreach programme.
The Minister said the Government had "recognised the well established link between poor educational performance and unemployment, which in turn is widely accepted as a key determinant in poverty and social exclusion".
She noted the report's emphasis on the merits of a "whole community approach" to finding solutions to those linked problems. "Measures must target the families and communities of early school leavers pro actively rather than on the basis of crisis management.
"It is recognised that processes of social exclusion tend not only to remove people from the centre of economic life and their society, but also from the political and social centre of that society, and ultimately, through a process of long term psychological corrosion, from the centre of their own lives."