Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the Senator, but the legacy is of junior and senior infant classes at INTO rates of pay. That is the cost factor, to cut to the chase. I have just come back from a new school where there was capacity, and there is a not-for-profit pre-school in it. It is facilitating parents and it works.

I would like to see co-operation on the history curriculum. We should get away from the kind of Celtic-Rangers controversy - where our victories are their defeats and vice versa - to a wider approach using modern media. The junior cycle reform will give students at that level a better opportunity to explore modules, particularly from Dundalk to Letterkenny where they are living in the reality of a cross-Border zone and know about this. It is something that I can see evolving.

Because we are mainstreaming children with learning difficulties, teachers in training colleges will be introduced to a pedagogy of how different learners learn and particularly those with different kinds of disabilities. In that way, they will be aware of it.

As regards the H.Dip., I personally want to see a break in the umbilical cord system whereby a bright girl or boy goes to college and comes back to do their H.Dip. in a school and stays in that school. They consequently have no broad experience outside that very narrow path. It should be made a requirement before somebody can get into the system on a permanent basis, that they would have experience of teaching in two or three different types of school.

As regards the special access programmes, Trinity College in particular has a very good one. Students who do post-leaving certificate courses and examinations are better equipped to get into university if they come from a disadvantaged area and have not been in that narrow academic stream in the traditional leaving certificate class.