The Minister for Education and Science has told senior departmental officials he wants the problem of up to 800 traveller children who drop out of school before 15 to be solved by the year 2003.
It is believed traveller children make up a sizeable proportion of the 900 to 1,000 children who do not even make the transition from primary to second-level school.
Last month, Mr Martin set up an Advisory Committee on Traveller Education to advise him on how to expand and improve education services to travellers.
It is made up of three traveller representatives together with officials from the Departments of Education and Justice, representatives of the teachers unions, school management bodies, the Irish Vocational Education Association and the National Association of Traveller Training Centres.
Early next month he will meet departmental officials to begin the process of planning and implementing a five-year programme to reach the target of "appropriate education provision" for all traveller children of school-going age.
It is understood Mr Martin hopes the programme will involve a further expansion of the Junior Traveller Training Centres, and the inclusion of traveller children in the Department's plans, announced six months ago and financed by the European Social Fund, to deal with early school leaving by disadvantaged children aged eight to 15.
One element of the latter will be a study to help the Department put in place a "tracking" system to make sure such children do not drift out of education unnoticed.
Because of the absence of such a system, there are no reliable figures on how many children, travellers or settled, drop out of school early.