Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have young girls who have come out of school and gone to college and one of the things I saw when they were coming through the house with their friends was that they were all at different levels of skills. Some of them were more academic and some had other skills. I saw the connection they had with the teacher in the classroom and the teacher's ability to look at people's different skills.

It is of huge benefit that we have teachers who are so in touch with what is going on in the classroom and are able to identify the different skills young people have. I would be concerned that there are a lot of projects out there doing the FETAC papers, and some young people think they are an easy way out of the structure of sitting in a classroom. I see that on the ground with young people. Some of them cause as much trouble as they can in the mainstream setting in order to go into the project down the road, get a few bob and get the FETAC. This issue has been dominating the last three years of my public life as I have been dealing with young people who have left school when really they would have been better off staying within the mainstream classroom system and not going into the local project, not only for the academic end of it but for many other reasons as well. Sometimes when they go back out into the project doing FETAC - I think Dr. Johnston might have said it - there is no point giving people certificates if they are not going to be given something to do afterwards. I have met so many young people who have gone through FETAC levels 1, 2, 3, who are at FETAC 5 and are still not doing anything. I wonder if it is really a good idea to put them into those situations. Perhaps we should keep them in the classroom and facilitate their needs rather than put them out into a project that at the end of the day - I am not saying this is true for all young people - can be an easy way out of the structure of the classroom.