{"id":438967,"date":"2026-04-16T23:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T23:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/438967\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T23:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T23:38:10","slug":"gas-company-seeks-to-cut-off-supply-to-school-that-owes-thousands-in-arrears-pac-hears-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/438967\/","title":{"rendered":"Gas company seeks to cut off supply to school that owes thousands in arrears, PAC hears \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A utility provider has sought to cut off the gas supply to a school that owes thousands of euro in arrears, the D\u00e1il Public Accounts Committee<\/a> (Pac) has been told.<\/p>\n

Fianna F\u00e1il<\/a> TD Paul McAuliffe said the school, which he did not identify, had debts of \u20ac33,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis week the gas company arrived at the school to disconnect them, to talk about disconnection,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an issue in Deis areas [locations with high concentrations of disadvantage] about capitation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever about the Financial Services Support Unit [which provides advice to schools on behalf of the Department of Education] helping to manage budgets, there is just not enough in the budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

McAuliffe said principals in schools were being expected to do a huge amount and it was going to affect recruitment.<\/p>\n

Fine Gael<\/a> TD Grace Boland said some principals and teachers had to come in two hours early \u201cto mop out schools when it rains\u201d due to poor infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the secretary general of the Department of Education<\/a>, Bernie McNally, told the committee that parents did not need to go down the legal route to try to secure a place in a special needs class or school for their child.<\/p>\n

\u201cGenuinely, we have put in the resources. There are twice the number of special classes now than there were in 2020,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe now have 31,000 specialist places. We have increased the number of special schools by 20. We have put an extra 50 special education needs organisers into the National Council for Special Education.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery parent who believes their child needs a specialist place, they need to make themselves known to the NCSE and the special education needs organisers. We will provide them with an appropriate education, a special class.\u201d <\/p>\n

McNally said education spending was not \u201ca runaway train\u201d. However, she said this year\u2019s spending deficit would involve \u201ca significant amount of money\u201d. <\/p>\n

Replying to Albert Dolan of Fianna F\u00e1il, she declined to provide a specific figure for the overrun. <\/p>\n

However, McNally said Minister for Education Hildegarde Naughton had publicly stated the overrun would be \u201cnorth of \u20ac500 million\u201d<\/a>. She said the increased spending was due to demographic growth and that education services were demand-led.<\/p>\n

She said there were 38,000 more students in the education system than in 2020, and 200,000 more than 2003. <\/p>\n

McNally said she understood the \u20ac19 million promised by the Government to ensure no school would lose special needs assistants next year would be additional funding.<\/p>\n

However, she said financial procedures had to be followed and Government would have to make a formal decision and the Oireachtas would have to approve the additional money. <\/p>\n

She said she could give a categoric assurance that no school would see special needs assistants transferred elsewhere. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A utility provider has sought to cut off the gas supply to a school that owes thousands of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,13264,18,13,14,6,29353,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,17419,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-438967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-department-of-education","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-hildegarde-naughton","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-public-accounts-committee","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116417023691523621","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}