Dr. Seán Rowland:

Why not pay for 300 or 400 of them over the next two or three years and solve the problem? We will get qualified teachers. Is that unfair? It is very fair to the students who are sitting there this week without a mathematics teacher. The situation is that we will have to pay the piper. We cannot get teachers on the cheap, and we should not. Let us see if we can get the best people available who will say they are finishing a degree and they want to go to anywhere in the country. We should pay them and see how many we get. They should be given a three-year contract with whoever it is and set out exactly what is wanted. Find out what everybody wants within the scope of paying them. I am just saying we should pay for their tuition. If they are travelling to a college, they will then have to take care of that cost. If they are coming to us, they do not have to travel. They can stay at home. If they are travelling to a different college, they will need to pay rent, but if their tuition is paid, I believe we will get somewhere. That is the most obvious answer to this issue.

We have people running around doing four and six hours. That is not fair on them or on the profession, and it is certainly losing our applicants. We will go to where the United Kingdom went in terms of its applicants. Having been involved in it for a number of years, I would say they are not at the standard at second or primary level that all of ours have reached. They certainly have great people but they do not have as many going into teaching now who would be of the calibre of those we get to interview. We interview everybody - primary, second level and post-primary - and we turn people away who do not pass the interview. We are looking for traits like empathy, just a regular personality. The committee should look at that because it is very simple.