The 1,080 places provided at Senior Traveller Training Centres (STTCs) are to be reduced by 100.

The 33 Senior Traveller Training Centres (STTCs) operated by Vocational Education Committees provide Travellers aged 15 and older with skills to make the transition to work and adult life, and to participate fully in their communities.

The target group is people who have left school with either minimal or no qualifications. However, there is no upper age limit, and particular effort is made to encourage parents on to the programme, given the impact this can have on their children's subsequent participation in schooling.

Shay Byrne, chairman of the association representing STTC directors, said most centres already had waiting lists and reducing their capacity would be unconscionable

“We’re helping people move from very low levels of reading and getting people to level 3 and 4 qualifications and sometimes up to Junior and Leaving Certificate. But they’re still finding the same obstacles when they go looking for work,” he said.

“You can’t jump from a situation which was Government policy for 20 years and suddenly pull the rug out from under them, there’s no point taking the easy targets,” Mr Byrne said.

He said their students are three times more vulnerable than other learners because unemployment, suicide and other social problems are three times higher in the Traveller community than in wider society.

Mr Byrne is director of the centre run by Co Wicklow VEC in Wicklow town, where most of the students are aged over 20. The eligibility for participation in STTCs will rise from 15 to 18 next year, and efforts are continuing to increase the number of Traveller students staying in school to Leaving Certificate.

The management of primary schools recently described the halving in the budget of the €2.4 million given to schools that cater for Traveller pupils as immoral and discriminatory. The money is used to help families with the purchase of books, uniforms and classroom materials to enable them to stay in education.

However, Mr O’Keeffe claims that reports on Traveller education recommend greater integration of members of the Travelling community into mainstream classes and he will be insisting on this.

A recent Department of Education report shows the number of Traveller children making it to second-level education more than doubled in six years to 2006, but the majority still never get to sit the Leaving Certificate. (Source: Irish Examiner)