Mr. Diarmaid de Paor:

It was not. This has come in with the Teaching Council. There is an anomaly because one's qualification in your subject is what you did in your degree. The teaching hours should be about your experience as a teacher. It can be more challenging and one may learn far more teaching a subject that is not the one that one qualified in, teaching the resource hours or other hours. Quite frankly I think we would argue that they should all qualify. In fact, the 300 hours requirement is excessive in our view. It is excessive because it is not practical to do it. Ideally one could say one should teach a full year of every class. That is great if it were possible for people to do it, but it is not and as Mr. Byrne said, it becomes more restrictive the more esoteric the subject. In respect of some of those subjects, there is the highest demand from people outside education for that education. There is a demand for students with physics, chemistry and economics. Yet we are saying to our physics, chemistry and economics teachers, we are going to make it really difficult for the teacher with those subject to get qualified.