Ms Roisin Shortall TD has described the school attendance service in Dublin as "completely inadequate". The city treasurer, Mr Michael Redmond, said the situation regarding the school attendance service was "totally unsatisfactory". The Labour TD, who is a city councillor, and the corporation official were speaking at a meeting of the city council's finance committee. It was agreed that the school attendance officer for the corporation should attend the December meeting of the committee to discuss the situation.
Describing the present operation of the service as "having no logic or accountability", Ms Shortall said whole areas of the city, transferred to Dublin Corporation from the county in 1985, did not have an attendance service at all. She referred particularly to Cherry Orchard, in Ballyfermot, and parts of Ballymun.
Mr Redmond, while stressing that the school attendance officers employed were people of "the highest professional standard", said the law relating to the service was outmoded.
As school attendance committees, to which the officers were technically answerable, were local authorities in themselves, it was impossible to transfer officers from one area to another, even if need suggested this was desirable. "As they have no legal entitlement to work in areas to which they are not assigned, any (prosecution) cases taken by them would be thrown out in court," he said. The school attendance service costs the corporation approximately £1 million a year to operate.