Professor Aislinn O'Donnell:

I want to respond to the question of access. We have heard about the kinds of changes we are seeing in higher education as a consequence of the lack of resources available to students to study, for example, as part-time or mature students. Senator Ruane discussed the way in which we need to think about access more broadly rather than simply creating financial conditions. When we are looking at initial teacher education, we really need to diversify the population engaging in initial teacher education at both primary and secondary level. We are seeing a drop off in the rates of mature students entering the profession, which is problematic. We need to resource the ways in which we engage a wide diversity of students, in particular those from hard-to-reach backgrounds, to think about becoming a teacher. Maynooth has begun a programme of reaching out to those communities and looking across the continuum of education from primary through to adult education. How we engage with the question of access is not just about funding in higher education. We need to think synergistically right across the sector and we need to stop chopping up public education into these different categories. That engagement, by creating a community of teachers who come from a wide range of backgrounds, will make a difference to kids in DEIS schools who see the possibility for themselves of becoming teachers. That is the kind of model we need to think of far more expansively than in our different sectors.