THE president of the Irish Vocational Education Association has called for VECs to be given the job of organising a network of pre-school education throughout the State.
Mr Brendan Griffin told the IVEA annual conference in Ennis, Co Clare, that this would be a "natural extension" of the work of VECs in training pre-school organisers and child-care professionals.
He also called for the Government to make VECs the "local-level agency charged with responsibility for all further, adult and continuing education." Such a role would "restore some recognisable functionality to the VEC."
Mr Griffin articulated the IVEA's deep concern about the future of VECs following the recent abolition of five town VECs and the possibility of further amalgamations, and in the context of the Education Bill. He said he was worried about the ability of the VECs to run their own schools being "undermined" in the event of new regional education boards being set up.
"Minister Niamh Bhreathnach is on record as stating that the VECs would have a meaningful role in any new structure. Our great fear was that the VECs would be merely trustees of their own schools. Other than that, VECs could have become custodians of an empty box."
Mr Griffin, who was a Fine Gael TD for Tipperary South for 16 years, said the rationalisation and abolition of VECs was part of an attack on provincial Ireland. It was "driven by a philosophy which fails to understand both the needs of provincial Ireland and the needs of the suburban sprawl of our towns and cities.
"The localness and accessibility of the VEC countered the isolation of modern society. The local VEC scheme understands its society, and the local community can identify with that scheme. The VEC afforded true community response to real community needs."
He said while there had been recent moves back to supportive local structures like the County Strategy Teams and the County Enterprise Boards, "this rationalisation process in the vocational sector is effectively the abolition of local structures."
Mr Griffin also criticised the Department of Education for its negativity" and "pessimism" towards vocational education, which he described as "an innovative, progressive, pro-active educational sector which is the most dynamic in the State."
He said the VECs' involvement in Youth reach and VTOS programmes, prison and traveller education programmes, adult, community and further education showed how dynamic the sector had been and would continue to be.
The challenge faced by the IVEA was to convince the incoming Minister for Education that "little modification is required" for the VEC sector.
On industrial relations, Mr Griffin said that in the recent difficult negotiations on the Programme for Competitiveness and Work, the genuine fears of the IVEA, as the VECs' management body, were "totally ignored". This was despite the "explicitly stated disagreement" of the IVEA and the Joint Managerial Body, representing the voluntary secondary sector.