Dr. Harold Hislop:

That is a fair question. We have been part of the evaluation the Department of the Taoiseach undertook of the Department as a whole under the organisational review programme, ORP, scheme. We were completely reviewed and all of our documentation and so on formed part of that review. In addition, we benchmark ourselves against international practice. We are members of the Standing International Conference of Inspectorates and participate in its programmes. We can compare our materials with what goes on in other countries. It is part of the reason we have linkages with the North of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. However, internationally across Europe, it is really important for us to benchmark ourselves against that. This also was part of the reason we participated in the OECD project that ran for the past four years on how one conducts evaluation and assessment across an educational system, including in-school assessment, self-evaluation, inspection and the other methods one can use.