1153. Deputy Mark Wall asked the Minister for Education and Youth if there will be additional funding provided to a school (details supplied) in County Kildare to employ a caretaker and a second secretary given the increasing demand on the school for both of these services [55444/26]

The ancillary services grant is payable to recognised primary schools and special schools in the Free Education Scheme, in line with Circular 0029/2026. The grant is intended to cater for the cost of employing secretarial and caretaking staff. As per Circular 0040/2009 the capitation grant provided for general running costs and the ancillary services grant provided for secretarial and caretaking services may be regarded as a common grant from which the Board of Management can allocate according to its own priorities.

Schools that employ both secretaries and caretakers under the 1978/79 scheme do not receive Ancillary grants as these employees are directly paid by the Department. Schools that employ either a secretary or caretaker under the 1978/79 scheme receive a standard reduced rate of the Ancillary Grant.

The standard full rate ancillary services grant is €175.60 per pupil. The standard reduced rate grant is €90.80 per pupil. Primary schools with fewer than 60 pupils are paid the ancillary services grant on the basis of having 60 pupils, while the maximum grant paid is based on an enrolment figure of 500 pupils. The ancillary services grant is based on the enrolment figure on 30 September of the previous year.

Special schools are paid the ancillary services grant based on the number of authorised fulltime teachers approved by the department for the school. The maximum grant is paid based on a ceiling of 16 teachers.

After Forsa accepted the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) agreement about salaries and leave for grant-funded school secretaries, the secretaries who accepted the agreement were added to the Department of Education and Youth’s payroll from September 2023. Because of this, the ancillary-related grant funding has been updated since schools are no longer paying these salaries directly.

Since the 2023/24 school year, schools have been paid the usual ancillary grant amount, minus the amount that schools previously paid to grant-funded secretaries prior to their acceptance of the new terms and conditions. Schools provided the department with these details, and this information is now being used to reduce the ancillary-related grant funding. Schools should be in no way disadvantaged by this, as the grant is reduced only by the amount they previously paid to their secretaries.

To date we have issued correspondence to schools with details of the arrangements for each interim period since September 2023.

In some situations, the salaries of ancillary staff in a particular school may have been higher than the ancillary grant due to the school, and the school may have funded this difference via other revenue streams. In situations where the salary that a school was paying their secretary was higher than the ancillary grant due to the school, prior to them being added to the Department of Education and Youth’s payroll, then the ancillary grant is reduced to NIL. This should not impact the school’s financial position.

Work is ongoing to identify a method of standardising the reduction to the ancillary-related grants for the longer term where school secretaries are being paid on the department’s payroll. Note the reductions applied to a school’s ancillary grant may change when a permanent model for ancillary-related grant reductions has been finalised.

Officials from my department have recently been in contact with the school referenced in this question to discuss the issues and have outlined the grant funding available to the school.

The Financial Support Services Unit (FSSU), funded by the department, is an important source of advice and support to schools on financial matters.