Employment of substitute teachers partly blamed for €314m overspend in education

Minister for Education Norma Foley will update her Cabinet colleagues on Wednesday morning on the overspend with the employment of substitute teachers, particularly in relation to Covid-19, being cited for part of this. File picture: Gareth Chaney

The Department of Education has spent €314m more than expected as a result of construction inflation, the war in Ukraine, and the need for extra substitute teachers.

Up to the end of September the department had spent €144m more than forecast on current expenditure, while capital expenditure was running €170m ahead of profile.

Education Minister Norma Foley will update her Cabinet colleagues on Wednesday morning on the overspend with the employment of substitute teachers, particularly in relation to Covid-19, being cited for part of this.

School transport also cost €17m more than anticipated due in part to increased costs to cater for additional pupils from Ukraine and contributions paid to bus contractors to offset increased fuel costs.

The cost of building new schools and repairing or extending others has also jumped and the department’s basic costs, based on tender outcomes, increased by 21% in the year to June 2022.

The urgent need to cater for the very large and unplanned influx of significant numbers of children from Ukraine and other countries has also added to the overall spend.

Housing

Meanwhile, Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien will tell the Cabinet that the Housing for All target of 24,600 homes to be delivered by the end of this year is expected to be met.

Completions stood at 20,807 for Q3 of 2022, more than the whole of 2021 (20,560) or any other year since the series began in 2011. Cabinet will be told that between the months of January and September, building started on almost 21,000 new homes.

More than 8,200 social homes are currently under construction with more than 12,000 in the pipeline.

Mr O'Brien will also bring details of the decision to make the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) the statutory body for the new mandatory Construction Industry Register Ireland.

The register was established on a voluntary basis in 2014 by the CIF with around 800 contractors currently signed up. However, it is expected this will increase to around 5,000 once the requirement to register comes into force.

Registration will apply to companies or sole traders who are considered a provider of building works for both residential and non-residential buildings and aims to provide assurance that clients are dealing with a competent and compliant operators.

Obsolete laws

Separately, Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath is to seek approval to draft the Stature Law Revision Bill that would remove obsolete legislation. It forms part of an extensive review of thousands of laws which pre-date Independence.

Almost 114,000 laws have been examined as part of the review to date, indicating the scale of the work being undertaken.