When the Green Paper on adult education was published late last year, it contained a number of suggestions for expanding the adult education service.

These included an extension of the Back to Education scheme, with greater flexibility with VTOS, an expanded adult literacy service and an increase in the number of PLCs.

Now, everyone is eagerly awaiting the national conference on the subject in Dublin Castle on September 22nd and then finally, the White Paper. Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science, Mr O'Dea, who is responsible for adult education, says that he hopes that the White Paper recommendations will be as close as possible to what will emerge in legislation. He also hopes that the White Paper will be published in November on the first anniversary of the Green Paper's publication.

Mr O'Dea says that he hopes that by the end of the lifetime of this Government, adult education will have been completely transformed. He points out that we are on the edge of an era of lifelong learning, involving constant re-skilling. "Security of employability, rather than security of employment will be the key issue", he adds. "We need to ensure that people can re-skill on a constant basis".

All kinds of barriers and bottlenecks to enhancing adult education need to be removed, like the provision of childcare facilities. "We've already provided £2 million a year for childcare. It's not enough, but it's a start", he comments.

Guidance is another issue where much more needs to be done. No overall coherent system is in place so that people can get practical guidance on adult education. Willie O'Dea recently announced a £200,000 pilot scheme for adult education counselling.

He said at the time of its launch: "This is the first ever system of guidance and counselling services to meet adult needs". This new service, which is being piloted in both urban and rural area, is designed to cover a range of programmes in the adult literacy, VTOS, adult and community education fields. Mr O'Dea says that he intends to mainstream the service after one year of the pilot scheme.

These are just a couple of the main issues that need to be tackled and as Mr O'Dea comments, "All the things we are doing now, we need to do more of and we need more money".

Aontas has identified a number of obstacles to the development of further education. These include the lack of finance; lack of access to mainstream programmes of education and training; lack of information and guidance; lack of childcare facilities; lack of progression routes from basic to higher education and between the formal and non-formal sectors and finally, the lack of continuing education opportunities for people in low-paid jobs.

Berni Brady, director of Aontas, says that none of these shortcomings will be remedied unless the sector gets more money. Last year, just over £65 million was put into adult education, or two percent of the total national budget on education. She acknowledges that Willie O'Dea is hugely committed to the expansion of adult education,adding: "This is the most crucial time for adult education in the past 30 years and we hope that the White Paper will put in place the proper structures and ensure adequate investment".

Willie O'Dea says that it's not unrealistic to see the budget for adult education increased by 10 per cent a year for the next 10 years.

One of the many areas identified by Mr O'Dea as needing improvement is the small amount spent on training by SME companies. They spend less on training than in any other OECD country and Mr O'Dea says that there will have to be encouragement to remove this, as well as all the other bottlenecks, to ensure the further take-up of adult education. A related issue is highlighted by Berni Brady: the question of people getting paid leave from employment to pursue further educational qualifications. She says that this is a big area to be tackled, especially as Ireland lags behind many other EU states in this regard.

If services in adult education are to be expanded then it's crucial that teachers working in the sector are given proper security of tenure, which often isn't the case now. They need regular contracts and terms of employment. Willie O'Dea agrees that more professionalism and more back-up is needed in the sector.

As Berni Brady says, what's happening now is that many skilled trades-people teaching in adult education and training are being wooed by more lucrative work in the private sector.

The fees question also has to be addressed. She says: "This is one of the biggest things stopping people going back to adult education. They can be a big drain on family resources, especially for women". But she says that they are not advocating free fees for everyone.

Another big issue is that of people in low-paid jobs getting equal access to the opportunities in adult education. The way that the system is structured now means that someone who is long-term unemployed stands a much better chance of getting the support he or she needs to take an adult education course than someone who is in a low-paid job.

Continues Ms Brady: "It's a major difficulty that the Live Register is being used as a major criterion for people's access to educational programmes. People can become disenfranchised this way".

In its response to the Green Paper, Aontas called for this Live Register assessment to be abolished.

More flexibility is also need for mature students who want to take higher education courses at universities or Institutes of Technology.

Aontas says that it can be very difficult for such students to go into higher education; as a result, we have the lowest access rate to higher education by mature students of any country in Europe.

A mere two to three per cent of the higher education student body here is made up of mature students, compared with over 20 percent in the UK. There, £150 million sterling has been allocated for mature students who want to get back into the education system, explains O'Dea.

There's also the question of cross-border co-operation in adult education, says Fiona McCauley, policy worker with Aontas. Adult education is supposed to be one of the main areas of the Belfast Agreement under the proposed Assembly, if it is ever set up, she explains. Often, the provision of adult education courses in the North is wider and deeper than in the Republic, but the problem for someone doing a course in Northern Ireland is that the subsequent qualification may not be recognised in the Republic.

A whole raft of issues have to be addressed in the White Paper, and most importantly of all, the finance has to be put in place. As Willie O'Dea says, many issues need to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck, but finance is the all-important question at the end of the day.