Mr. John Murphy:

I will deal with two other points raised and then hand over to Mr. Shanahan.

On the question of languages and language policy, obviously, it is a matter for the Department of Education and Skills to identity the measures that can best be put in place, given its range of priorities. As members know, substantial curriculum reform is under way at second level, with a particular focus on PISA and improving our ranking in that respect.

On the question of people not being able to find jobs because they do not have the necessary language skills, we tend to find that the issue is not about them having a knowledge of a foreign language but having the skills of a native language speaker which are of a much higher standard and which we realistically cannot expect to address in a language skills policy in the education sector.