The Green Paper has been greeted with widespread enthusiasm and is regarded as pushing all the right buttons. However, there is one aspect of the paper that could be controversial - the structures.

The paper proposes the establishment of a National Adult Learning Council and local adult education learning boards. According to the document, "the challenge of coming up with an adult education structure is one of creating a framework for the sector which accords it a higher level of priority in mainstream provision while ensuring innovation, flexibility, responsiveness, and learner-centred commitment. A structure must include all the key stakeholders if it is to succeed in developing a comprehensive and integrated approach."

A problem is that, in recent years, the number of stakeholders has mushroomed. The Department of Education and Science apart, the Department of Tourism, Sport and Recreation, the Department of Agriculture and Food, the Department of Health and Children, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources, the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs are among the providers of education.

Other agencies include FAS and the area-based partnerships. The VECs play a huge adult education role and, along with the community and comprehensive schools, provide self-financing part-time education. In addition, we have the everexpanding community education sector.

It can be anticipated that the VECs, which since 1984 have operated ad hoc adult education committees, will put up a strong fight to retain their role. "We should avoid spending millions of pounds on new administrative structures when we have them already," argues Michael Moriarty, secretary general of the Irish Vocational Education Association. "The VECs want to work in partnership with all the providers of education to target programmes and devise an integrated area-based approach. We must avoid duplication and wastage of resources."

AONTAS director Berni Brady says: "I can understand that people will welcome a structure in which the VECs are partners rather than in control. The VECs currently control the adult education boards and the better VECs do operate on a representative basis. However, if the boards are taken out of VEC control, the issue of accountability emerges - the VEC system is, after all, democratic."

Professor John Coolahan of NUI Maynooth believes that the structures need "further thinking through - they must be accountable and their progress must be monitored."

The proposed National Adult Learning Council must have teeth and clout, argues Mary Maher, director of the Dublin Learning Centre. "It mustn't become a talking shop. At local level, the boards must be representative of all the sectors. There are models of VEC boards which work well, but the area-based partnerships also have boards. We should look at them and see which is best.

"The structures will cause difficulty, because we're talking about control."