A spike in the number of primary school amalgamations could pave the way for divestment of patronage, the Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan has said.

A chance to buy 24 Cork apartments, 11 in the city centre in a quality, contemporary scheme and 13 in Passage West, all for €3.5 million, has come to market with DTZ Sherry FitzGerald, who’ll also sell in two specific lots.

The head of a Cork educational authority has insisted that both funding for teachers’ salaries and the body’s capital expenditure were not cut as a result of legal settlements it paid out over a number of years.

The chairman of the Oireachtas’s public spending watchdog has criticised the prior management of County Cork’s vocational education and asked why board members of the time remain in their positions today.

TWENTY Years a Growing, or Fiche Bliain ag Fás, is a classic memoir of 20th century Irish literature — but, in the case of a Cork city office building, it’s more like a case of Five Years, and no Fás.

The Cork Education and Training Board (ETB) has introduced a whistleblower policy to help prevent a repeat of financial irregularities which rocked the education body it succeeded.

Over €400,000 may have to be written off by the Limerick and Clare Education Training Board (ETB) as a result of weaknesses in the control of capital projects by the former County of Limerick VEC.

A Co Cork educational centre for early school leavers made inappropriate payments to staff and students, an audit by the State’s spending watchdog found.

Students of today have to be prepared for jobs that have not yet been conceived, an awards ceremony was told.

The board of the former Cork County VEC received nearly six times more in payments and expenses than its city counterparts in the five years prior to the amalgamation of the two organisations, correspondence to the Public Account Committee has revealed.

A senior data protection official has described as "shameful and shocking" how a number of credit unions helped private investigators dupe civil servants into handing over citizens’ personal details.

Two female private investigators who pretended to be HSE and VEC officials were able to blag personal data from other civil servants to help credit unions find members who had defaulted on their loans.

Co Cork VEC lobbied the minister for education for new laws to impeach committee members for disloyalty after it took issue with the actions of a whistleblower.

The Department of Education is continuing to pay wages to staff at some VEC creches despite the fact the facilities have been closed for some time.

County Cork Education and Training Board has said it and the Department of Education have delivered detailed responses to more than 30 issues raised in a long-running, public spending investigation.

The Department of Education has said it can find no evidence that Wexford VEC got permission before signing a lease for a new headquarters which has cost taxpayers €420,000.

A two-year investigation into the financial affairs of the County Cork VEC has been completed and is to be published next month.

The Government has spent over €600,000 securing and running empty army barracks which were closed to help make savings in the Defence Forces.

The former Wexford VEC has been ticked off for wasting more than €400,000 to rent a vacant building.

Size: 100 sq m (1,070 sq ft)

A committee member credited with exposing financial irregularities in Cork County VEC has asked the permanent head of the Department of Education to appoint an inspector to further investigate the education body.

Mismanagement within the old Co Cork VEC has forced a six-figure tax settlement with the Revenue Commissioners.

FOLLOWING two years of denials, the remnants of County Cork VEC has finally had to accept its house was not in order. While managing its €100m annual budget, it failed to keep proper accounts and, because of these shortcomings, it underpaid it taxes.

Parents living in a satellite town in Cork will breathe a sigh of relief as their local community school is set for significant expansion.

Wanted: Private Investigator to be based in Donegal — via JobBridge.

A special needs service has been hit with an effective funding cut because of a failure by County Cork VEC to adhere to rules on the payment of teachers’ wages.

Building work on a new €3.8m library on the northside of Cork city is due to start within weeks.

More than eight decades of education provision ends today when 33 city and county vocational education committees (VECs) are consigned to history.

A teenager due to begin his Junior Cert exams yesterday was fighting for his life in hospital after suffering head and neck injuries in a quad-bike accident on Tuesday.

A retired teacher has settled a High Court action for damages over claims that he was allegedly bullied and subject to homophobic incidents while he was employed by a Vocational Education Committee.

Mallow Credit Union has refused to clarify how a property asset was recorded in its accounts at being worth 63 times its actual value to the institution.

Child welfare is being compromised at a creche County Cork VEC broke procurement rules to build.

A €1m VEC creche that was supposed to facilitate a five-fold increase in affordable places is losing money and catering for the same number of preschool children than when it was based in a smaller unit next door.

The saving of dozens of teachers’ jobs under threat from a budget cut will not be enough to save some important post-Leaving Certificate (PLC) courses, say VEC bosses.

The State’s spending watchdog has said a special scrutiny report on the operation of County Cork VEC appears inevitable given the volume of complaints arising from the organisation.

Slow allocation of staff, poor communication, and inadequate planning were among the main causes of delay to thousands of student grants, an independent review has reported.

County Cork VEC spent almost €50,000 responding to reports that it had lost more than €100,000 due to mismanagement at a Youthreach centre.

As a relatively new school, Pobalscoil na Tríonóide in Youghal is still in the process of making a name for itself on the playing fields.

Future careers in dance and music could be under threat from budget cuts of hundreds of teaching posts on further education courses.

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn has said he has no power to act on County Cork VEC’s request to remove a whistleblowing councillor from its board.

A VEC has asked Education Minister Ruairí Quinn to remove a committee member who helped to expose a number of financial problems within the group.

Education workers have called on the Government to divert money paid to fee-paying schools to areas “of greatest need” in the education system.