THE leaders of the State's adult education and literacy organisations have warned politicians that the drive towards new technology in education could leave 100,000 people who cannot read and write properly even further behind.
The acting director of the National Adult Literacy Agency, Ms Inez Bailey, told a Dublin press conference that increasing the participation of these people was a social justice issue.
"The parties are all talking about young people becoming computer literate.
"Our concern is for the huge number of people who are being further marginalised and excluded, who have no access to reading and writing schemes and thus to ways of improving their skills base.
She said NALA, using a tiny government allocation of £1.9 million for adult literacy and community education, was currently reaching around 5,000 literacy students.
Some 85 per cent of NALA's tutors are volunteers working without pay.
Ms Berni Brady, director of AONTAS, the National Association of Adult Education, said it was looking for a progressive doubling of the Adult Literacy and Community Education budget each year for the next three years from the current £2 million to £16 million.
AONTAS and NALA are also looking for a similar progressive doubling of the £308,000 annual government grant to support the work of organisations providing adult education; a waiving of second level exam fees for "second chance" education students; and an extension of the abolition of third level fees to adult students doing part time and distance courses.
Ms Brady said AONTAS's core grant went up by £5,000 to £155,000 this year, an increase she called "ludicrous".
UCD's director of adult education, Dr Kevin Hurley, said the demands for a doubling of funding were too modest.
He said the Department of Education's current adult education allocation, at £3.27 million, is 915 per cent of the total £2.2 billion education budget.
This excludes the Vocational Training Opportunities Scheme, which is almost totally funded by the EU.
He compared this figure with the £150 million per year the new British education secretary, Mr David Blunkett, has pledged to adult education from next year onwards.
The professor of education at Maynooth, Dr John Coulahan, said both the National Education Convention and recent EU and OECD reports had concluded that Ireland and Europe are now on the threshold of a new era in which adult education and "lifelong learning" will "come to centre stage".
However, he warned that adult education is unattractive to politicians because it is too vague and undefined, appearing to be "a maw which means everything and anything and can swallow up all kinds of resources".
There is a need for Irish practitioners to come together to identify "strategic, concrete priorities", such as targeted moves towards abolishing illiteracy, he said.