Government spending on adult literacy has risen sevenfold under this Government, the Minister of State in charge of adult education, Mr Willie O'Dea has said. It has risen from £815,000 in 1996 to nearly £5.7 million this year.
Mr O'Dea was announcing an extra £2 million in the adult literacy budget for the period up to June 2000, made available through a reallocation of EU structural funds. He said his aim was to raise the annual budget to £10 million by the time the Government goes out of office.
He also announced that in order to make a return to education more attractive for the long-term unemployed, an extra £25 weekly training allowance would be paid to participants on the Vocational Training Opportunity Scheme (VTOS) who have been on unemployment benefit or assistance for at least one year.
This would allow such people "a level playing field" in choosing whether to return to education or to training with FAS. FAS trainees are already paid the £25 allowance.
Mr O'Dea said there was a need to target the £30 million spent annually on the VTOS programme on the long-term unemployed, particularly older men, who needed the scheme most. He said up to now there had "not been the interest we'd like there to be" from the deprived areas at which the scheme was aimed.
The director of the National Adult Literacy Agency, Ms Inez Bailey, welcomed the announcements but said the new funding represented "only the tip of the iceberg". About 10,000 people, only 2 per cent of those with literacy difficulties, were being reached by current programmes.
Only 3 per cent of the education budget was being spent on this "very vital area", she said.
She said that even the people being reached were getting only one or two hours of tuition per week, which led to "very minimal progress", and they did not have any of the financial incentives available for the long-term unemployed to return to training or education.