Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As a committee, we are operating under the assumption that in order to meet the annual demand for social workers, we would have to increase the number of educational facilities and pathways to the qualification of social workers, whether it be part-time or, potentially, long distance modular learning. All of these issues can be worked out in every profession, of which I am aware. There will always be an element of somebody learning on a part-time basis over a period of time, with the required nine-to-five full-time setting at the end of the process. This can be done by way of the universities, the institutes of technology or the new technical college-----