Madam, – Education Editor Seán Flynn exhorts the new Minister for Education and Skills, Mary Coughlan to “sort out VECs and get better value for close to €1 billion” (April 6th). He references the McCarthy report on public service expenditure as the basis for his comment and also refers to a significant increase in VEC administration expenditure in recent years.
It would appear that both Mr McCarthy and Mr Flynn may have failed to fully comprehend the breadth and scope of educational and training programmes currently being channelled through VECs and indeed, the way that VECs work. Besides the second level school cohort, there are up to 200,000 young and adult learners availing of VEC educational programmes. These programmes cover adult literacy, community education, back to education schemes, educational programmes in prisons, language and induction programmes for minority groups, and much more.
In many cases the budgets approved by the Department of Education and Skills for these programmes include the cost of tutor and teaching resources but, unlike schools, provide a minimum allowance for what can be considerable administration costs. These are therefore borne under main VEC administration budgets.
VEC expenditure is subject to strict internal audit procedures, as well as audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General and by auditors on behalf of a variety of EU- funded programmes. VECs are also accountable to both the Minister and Oireachtas committees through their CEOs as accounting officers. All of these regularly review VEC expenditure under value-for-money criteria, a fact seldom acknowledged by media commentators. – Yours, etc,