A NEW training agency is to take over the work of State agency Fás, the Dáil has heard. Tánaiste and Minister for Education Mary Coughlan made the announcement as she warned of a “severe restriction” in Government spending for the education sector.

Ms Coughlan also warned that since there had been agreement not to cut pay rates “any savings must be achieved by reducing staff numbers” or from the €2.4 billion “non-pay” areas such as funding for schools and universities, school transport, investment in research and development, training allowance and office running costs.

Ms Coughlan also said, however, that while the Croke Park agreement would ensure efficiencies, savings would be “minimal” in the short to medium-term.

Acceptance and implementation of the deal would be key to ensure “considerable reform and to secure additional productivity from teachers and lecturers”, including an extra hour every week from teachers and lecturers.

These reforms would ensure better value for taxpayers’ money but “in cold and hard accounting terms the resultant savings in current expenditure are minimal in the short- to medium-term”.

Outlining details of “a programme of quiet but increasingly substantive reform” she had instituted, Ms Coughlan said “many other reforms are in the pipeline”.

She plans to restructure the higher level sector, saying: “I intend in the new year to provide for a renewed and freshly mandated training agency to assume the training work of Fás.

“Our focus on quality in the past has served us well but we need to do more.”

The Minister also plans an “overhaul” of teacher education and to “roll out considerable curriculum reforms. I also intend that a greater number of education services will be delivered and managed locally through our strengthened VECs”.

The choices to be made “are extremely difficult” and compounded by increases in pupil numbers with an increase of 5,000 primary school children in the last year with a further increase of 7,000 next year.