With the publication of the Green Paper, Adult Education in an Era of Lifelong Learning, last November, all the signs are that the Cinderella of our education system is about to come in from the cold. Up until now, adult education has been working in a vacuum, without the underpinning of a co-ordinated national policy.

The Green Paper's recommendations read like the adult education sector's wish-list. "Compared with the White Paper on Education, which took a very narrow view of adult education, this Green Paper is light years ahead," comments Berni Brady, director of AONTAS, the National Association of Adult Education.

"The philosophical base-line of the paper is important," she argues, since it expands the traditional view of adult education. "The role of adult education is examined in relation to the development of the workforce, in addressing poverty and disadvantage and in supporting community development and community education."

This is significant, says Brady, because, for the first time, adult education is being officially recognised as a tool of empowerment. Up until now, adult education has been widely regarded as hobbyist or as providing training programmes for employment and work.

Adult education, the paper notes, plays a key role as "a compensatory process" providing second-chance access to skills and qualifications. Its role is significant, too, as "an empowering process enabling participants to take a more active role in decision-making and other processes which impact upon them" and as a means of addressing "the forces of exclusion on their lives."

Adult education can also provide an "upgrading process" which enables people to cope with technological change and the impact of international forces.

The Green Paper asserts: "It is crucially important that, in an era of rapid economic growth and job creation, education and skill deficiencies must not pose a barrier to any person accessing a livelihood." Figures from the 1997 Labour Force Survey show that 63 per cent of the unemployed have had only primary or lower second-level education.

The phenomenal economic growth that Ireland has enjoyed over the past 10 years "presents a unique opportunity to undertake innovative and wellresourced educational, training and other interventions so as to build the capacity of the marginalised sectors to secure a greater proportion of the national wealth and wellbeing than they have attained to date . . . At a time of skills shortages in many sectors, returns on this investment will be much more immediate than in the past, particularly if directed at those currently available for work."

OECD figures show that parental levels of education, particularly those of mothers, influence children's performance in school. "A focus on adult and second-chance education, including special supports for lone parents, is therefore needed to break the intergenerational cycle of disadvantage," the Green Paper argues.

OECD figures quoted in the paper show that educational levels of the older population in Ireland are considerably lower than those in other OECD countries. Ireland also lags behind other countries in the number of mature students enrolled at third level - here no more that 5 per cent of entrants to fulltime courses are mature students, while in Britain in 1995/6 one-third of full time students were over 23 years of age.

We also scored poorly in the OECD's 1995 international literacy survey. This found that one-quarter of the Irish population performed at the lowest level - only Poland's score was worse.

According to NUI Maynooth's Prof John Coolahan, who with his colleague Dr Tom Collins advised on the Green Paper, the social inclusion aspects of the document are very much in line with the thinking that is going on in western Europe. "There is a realisation that developed societies can't afford to waste talent," he says.

Many countries, including Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden and Spain, have published policy documents which view education as a means of lifting up the marginalised in society, he says.

A lecturer in the centre for adult and community education at NUI Maynooth, Anne Ryan welcomes the fact that "the Green Paper gives official recognition for the first time to the community education sector." This sector, which has enjoyed significant growth in recent years, is community based and is run by local groups. These groups, the paper notes, rely on funding from a wide variety of sources, important among them the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs.

The significance of community education, says the document, "lies in the way it extends and deepens the democratic process and can successfully engage those who are most excluded in our society . . . It aims to develop the capacity of the more marginalised sectors in the community to participate both in decision-making and in the general social and cultural life of the society."

The Green Paper identifies the tackling of low literacy and numeracy levels as Ireland's "primary adult education priority." Failure to do so, it warns, will seriously constrain the life chances of those affected and limit our overall economic and social progress. "Low literacy levels of the scale prevalent in Ireland will serve to disengage an ever larger proportion of the national population from the daily life of society."

Mary Maher, director of the Dublin Adult Learning Centre is "delighted" that literacy has been prioritised. "Although the literacy budget has been increased, there are still people who have access to only one hour's tuition per week."

The proposal for a phased development of a back-to-education initiative for adults who have not competed second-level education has been widely welcomed. The recommendation to offer VTOS, Youthreach and PLC courses on part-time and modular bases, in the mornings, at night, over weekends and during the summer is particularly innovative.

"People who suffer disadvantage are the priority and they must be accommodated," says Michael Moriarty, general secretary of the Irish Vocational Education Association. The Green Paper suggests that the programmes be targeted at prioritised groups - first, the 15-to-54 age group which has had only primary education, followed by people in the 15to-39 age group who have achieved only Junior Cert qualifications.

The Green Paper on adult education is one of countless, excellent policy documents and reports which have been published in Ireland over the years. Many have been left on shelves to gather dust. How do we know that this won't happen to this one?

Maynooth's Coolahan argues that the time has never been better for this particular document to be discussed, pushed through and ultimately adopted as national policy. "There is now a convergence of opinions and analyses by politicians, industrialists, trade unions and educationalists, who are now looking at issues from similar perspectives," he says. There is a realisation that, to remain a developed society, we need the whole of that society to be knowledgebased and we can no longer afford to waste our human resources.

"A knowledge-based society is the only way forward," he says. "A learning society is vital. The key obligation of our current generation is to make the breakthrough and apply resources with the clear understanding about what we are doing and why we doing it."

In economic terms, the time is ripe to make the necessary investments. "If we don't take that track we will be betraying our society," Coolahan argues. "In a short space of time, the sense of alienation and marginalisation will grow and could be very destructive socially."

Clearly, when it comes to the Green Paper on adult education, it's less a question of can we afford to do it? but rather one of can we afford not to?