Education and Training Boards
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-23
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Marian Harkin (IND), Sligo-Leitrim

I accept the Deputy's bona fides on this, and I hear what he says. However, I cannot emphasise often enough that there are no cuts here. There is an increase of €4 million in the budget. Each ETB has to decide how they spend their individual budgets, within certain parameters, obviously. ESOL programmes are simply going back to pre-2022 levels. We have seen similar tapering off of supports across other Departments. This was an emergency fund because of the Ukraine war and now, we are going back to where we were beforehand. I understand what the Deputy is saying to me, however. If he contacts me, I will get him as best an answer as I can. I cannot emphasise firmly enough, however, that it is up to individual ETBs. Each of them gets its funding. GRETB had a significant increase in funding and it is up to it how it spends that funding. I am, however, willing to speak to the Deputy about it to see if we can find any solutions.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-23/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-23