The Minister for Education and Science is the senior minister at the Department of Education and Science (An Roinn Oideachais agus Eolaíochta) in the Irish Government.

The current Minister for Education and Science is Mary Hanafin, TD. She is assisted by:

• Síle de Valera, TD - Minister of State with special responsibility for Adult Education, Youth Affairs and Educational Disadvantage;
• Brian Lenihan, Jr, TD - Minister of State with special responsibility for Children.

Until September 1997 the department was known simply as the "Department for Education".

Overview

The Minister engages in a wide range of activities relating to education in the Republic of Ireland, including policy planning, quality assurance and the provision of a broad range of services.

The department officially aims to:

• Promote equity and inclusion
• Promote lifelong learning
• Plan for education that is relevant to personal, social, cultural and economic needs.

In recent years some of these functions have been devolved to statutory authorities, in particular the Higher Education Authority, the National Qualifications Authority and the State Examinations Commission. Irish universities and colleges are to a large extent free of government control, with this being largely limited to policy formation and statistics prepairation.

List of office-holders

Minister for Education (1921-1997)

Minister for Education & Science (1997-present)

Footnotes

1. John J. O'Kelly bore the title of Secretary for Education.
2. The terms of office of Michael Hayes and Finian Lynch overlap. This is because they were ministers under two different but overlapping political systems. Michael Hayes was a member of the Ministry of the Irish Republic, while Finian Lynch was a minister of the Provisional Government. For a period in 1922 an anomalous situation existed in which these two administrations overlapped.

See also

• Irish cabinets since 1919

External link

• Department of Education and Science