The Minister for Education, Noel Dempsey, is 'consulting' people at 17 Your Education System (YES) meetings throughout the State. At the latest in Cavan town, the 'usual suspects' were prominent, but there was also some raw emotion on display, including one mother exasperated by her experiences. John Downes reports.

The woman holding the microphone is clearly determined to make her point, and RTÉ's John Bowman is only too happy to let her do so. Addressing the 220 or so people gathered on a dark Thursday night in a Cavan hotel, she expresses concern about the backlog in applications for special needs provision in schools, and promptly sits back down again. Just as swiftly, the microphone moves on.

Earlier, the assembled audience view a slickly-produced video featuring contributions from people such as Senator Feargal Quinn, Prof Ray Kinsella of UCD and Mary Davis of Special Olympics fame. In it, they outline some of the major issues that they believe face the Irish education system.

Intended to kick-start proceedings, it seems, initially at least, to have the opposite effect. There is a hesitancy among the assembled participants to be the first to speak. The seal on this reluctance is quickly broken, however, once the first participant has spoken. Hands gradually begin to shoot up all over the room, where people sit on red and gold upholstered chairs, the type you see in hotel function rooms everywhere.

Some people have obviously done their homework, working off pre-prepared notes as they raise issues of particular concern to them. These include the need for expenditure on school buildings, a lack of resources for "second chance" education, how to facilitate parental involvement in education and the role of physical education and nutrition in combating childhood obesity.

Others speak just as eloquently off the cuff. One of the most moving contributions is from a mother whose son has not yet had his assessment for special needs resource teaching approved by the Department of Education.

Close to tears, she outlines the efforts she has made just to get the Department to pay attention. She is sick and tired of being left listening to music each time she rings them, she says.

Her son has got to the point where he absolutely hates school, and although she has done everything she can to make him go, at this stage she is at her wits end. One option, she says, is to take legal action against the Department .

Meanwhile, the man with the power to improve her situation, the Minister for Education, Noel Dempsey, is sitting just a few feet away from her among the audience. He is beside a woman who occasionally sneaks a sip of her red wine. He is writing notes continuously.

Afterwards, the Minister says these meetings, every one of which he has attended to date, will help clarify his thinking about where the priorities in education should lie.

While it will not automatically lead to any guarantee of new funds, nor a new White Paper on Education, the YES process will, he says, provide a very powerful statement of the values that should underline any future decisions on educational policy.

Having consulted "the people", it is hard to escape the feeling that his hand might also be strengthened when he is sitting around the Cabinet table looking for extra resources.

Some problems with tonight's YES process, nevertheless, remain.

At its launch in January of this year, Dempsey said he was inviting everyone in the State to participate in discussion and debate on education in Ireland into the future.

"In the past, those who reviewed our education system were largely drawn from those with a direct interest in education - the owners and managers of education facilities, teachers and my Department," he said. "That is fine as far as it goes, but it misses the point that the Irish education system is owned by the Irish people."

A quick glance at the attendance list, however, reveals that many of the people at tonight's meeting - parents, teachers, union activists and education managers, mainly - are from these very same groups.

An even quicker count of the audience reveals only a dozen or so are under the age of 25.

Some of tonight's speakers also admit that this is not the first meeting of YES they have attended, indicating that the attendance figures include a good deal of repeat business.

There is little sign of those leaders in business, for example, who are so often vocal in the media about what they want from the education system.

Even more significantly, perhaps, one speaker articulates her concerns that very few people from socio-economically disadvantaged areas are in attendance. As another contributor puts it, those present are mostly a self-selecting group of interested people.

Dempsey rightly points out that there has been some progress made in encouraging participation. The meeting is addressed by people working in their own communities, some of them early school-leavers, as well as students, parents and teachers, all of whom have given up three hours of their time to come along tonight. This is a testimony to the passion for education that these people have, the Minister believes.

Yet clearly there is another, silent majority who will never attend meetings such as these. Although difficult to categorise, they are the people who say they are too busy to get involved in their children's school, who don't attend their school's parent association meetings, who are not self-confident enough to get up in front of 220 people and a government Minister to let their views be known.

The organisers, to their credit, stress their plans to have a specific meeting to deal with educational disadvantage, as a means of encouraging contributions from these groups. Other meetings will include consultations with students and people with a specific interest in special needs provision.

Yet of the hundreds of thousands of people who should be passionate about attending these meetings, only a l minority, including a considerable number of the "usual suspects", have been represented at YES to date.

While this perhaps provides some indication of where most peoples' real priorities lie, more worryingly for those behind YES, it also suggests a lack of confidence that contributing to the process will bring about any lasting change.

At the end of the YES process, its trustees will draw up a report detailing the outcome of the consultation process.

One of those present tonight says he does not understand why the Minister has to have these meetings at all. It is just a cosmetic exercise, he says. Sure the Minister has heard all these issues before, he adds.

"What is there to say that this won't just end up being another file on the Minister's desk?" the man asks.

Liam Cahill, one of tonight's panellists, however, communicates the feelings of many when he says that, while it is all very well talking about vision and values, at some stage we need to "get down and dirty" in determining the precise mechanisms for expenditure on education.

The YES process is now over halfway through its public phase. Attendance at the meetings - usually several hundred - has been better than expected. In truth, the "usual suspects" have come out in force.

But the process has revealed how difficult it is to get people to focus not on the problems of the present, but on the needs of the future.