In all the hype about the Celtic Tiger and the role education has played in attracting multinationals to Ireland, there's one area of education and training that is overlooked, brushed under the carpet even. This is the sector that works with early school leavers.

A 1997 report of the National Economic and Social Forum shows that annually between 1993 and 1995, 1,000 students failed to progress to second level; 3,000 youngsters left school without any qualifications whatsoever; 7,600 left school only with Junior Cert only and 2,600 left having completed only Junior Cert and a vocational training course. Many of these youngsters are from the most marginalised groups in Irish society and their lack of education serves to perpetuate their status.

What then are we doing about our early school-leavers? What provisions do we make for them and how effective are they? It was back in the mid-Seventies that community training workshops (CTWs) funded by FAS and managed by the local communities were established.

There are now 52 such centres around the country catering for early school-leavers aged between 15 and 25.

Youthreach, meanwhile, is a programme for early school-leavers which has been developed by the VECs. Together the two initiatives offer 4,000 places, with a further 1,000 places coming on stream this year.

Both strands of the provision offer practical training in a range of skills including woodwork, catering and sports coaching, computer studies, personal development and literacy and numeracy skills. The centres, which maintain close local links, are widely regarded as providing a valuable intervention and take an innovative and trainee-centred approach to the youngsters. Groups are small: around 10 per trainer.

Centres report job or further training placement rates of between 60 and 70 per cent. But while some trainees get City and Guilds, NCVA, Junior Certificate and FAS Integrated Assessment qualifications, others are so disadvantaged that it's difficult for them to achieve any certification.

"The current system of accreditation lacks coherence and sometimes has little useful currency," comments Patricia McCarthy, development officer with Stepahead, an EU-funded Youthstart initiative. "Trainers find themselves under pressure to work to accreditation even with groups who need a more therapeutic, supportive approach," she says. "The system of continuous intake of trainees makes this difficult situation impossible in some cases."

In practice only a small number of trainees move from the workshops into FAS apprenticeships, because they lack the required qualifications. As a result many trainees end up taking insecure, low paid work, says McCarthy. However, according to Gus O'Connell, FAS national co-ordinator for Youthreach, FAS is aware of this problem and is currently piloting a bridging programme - in maths, science, engineering, construction skills, electronic/electrical and new technology - which is designed to bring trainees up to minimum entry qualification levels.

The fact that the workshops take youngsters from the age of 15 years only means that a significant number of early school-leavers who have dropped out from the age of 11 on, or have been suspended, are left in limbo. Some people argue in favour of extending the remit of the workshops to admit younger trainees.

However, Dermot Stokes, national co-ordinator of Youthreach, rejects this view. "If young people are dropping out of school that's a challenge for the schooling system," he argues. "Schools need to adapt, change and accommodate a greater diversity of need."

Talk to staff working in the sector and you get a picture of people involved in some of the most difficult work in the country, working with some of Ireland's most disadvantaged youngsters who themselves feel undervalued and even marginalised.

It's true to say that they are largely ignored by society. Although staff in the community workshops have recently received a pay award, Youthreach staff are still fighting for theirs.

"I'm concerned about the drift of good staff out of Youthreach into other areas," says Stokes. "They can earn 40 per cent more in EU-funded development programmes, doing the same type of work."

A further problem has arisen for community workshop employees. FAS is now asking CTW boards of management to reapply each year for the right to provide training facilities. Initially the workshops operated on one-year contracts but these have long lapsed and the relationship between FAS and the CTWs has continued for years on an informal basis.

"This will only add to the insecurity of staff," comments a community workshop manager. "They don't want us to be seen as part of FAS but they want to dictate how we operate."

Although on the ground the relationship between the CTWs and FAS is good, the workshops which believe that they have to remain flexible and focused on local needs find dealing with the multi-layered FAS bureaucracy frustrating and time consuming.

There are crazy blips too. Five years ago a number of CTWs were surprised to get deliveries of unrequested computers. "I was out at a meeting," recalls one manager, "and when I returned there were eight state-of-the-art computers sitting on the floor. Nobody knew how to use them. We've had to beg borrow and steal training from all sorts of people and eventually FAS gave us a day's training."

Since the computers came without technical backup, at least one CTW relies on a kind neighbour in the event of a breakdown. He happens to be "a whizz with computers."

Most Youthreach and CTW centres use rented accommodation. A 1996 report of the ESF Evaluation Unit noted that, if the amounts spent on rent by both the CTWs and Youthreach were otherwise invested, it could have resulted in "a network of specialised, purpose-built facilities which would be of permanent benefit to the communities in which they are located."

Renting can add to the sense of insecurity. Just last week in Dublin the Drumcondra Training Workshop in horticulture was forced to move out of its centre at All Hallows College. The land, which they have occupied for 15 years, has been sold for building.

Mary Millett, the workshop's training co-ordinator, says that finding an alternative premises was virtually impossible. Fortunately, DCU stepped in and offered a new site. "Can you imagine the national outcry if third-level students found that their college had been sold for building land, with no thought whatsoever to their training or education needs?," asks Stepahead's Patricia McCarthy.

For the future there are signs that the sector is going to flex its muscles. Thanks to the work of Stepahead, a national forum is to be established. The National Youth Development Network, which brings together the CTWs, Youthreach and hostels for young people, will be launched next month. It promises to work to raise the policy issues and lobby for change.