Professor Diarmuid Hegarty:

When the Deputy joined the meeting earlier, I noted and admired the assiduous notes she was taking. I return the compliment she gave us at the beginning. She asked questions about random selection and the Irish language to which I will reply. Random selection is a real problem. We must ask ourselves how many places are available in medicine and what is the limit. The limit is the number of clinical places. We must ask how many of those clinical places are actually taken up by non-EU students. It is a significant number. The universities must market medical education abroad to balance the books. The fees are substantial, but perhaps the Government would consider buying some of those places. That would give more places to Irish students and is one solution to the Deputy's question about random selection. The problem of the swelling of the numbers in random selection is a function of the pandemic.

We may have that problem again if we have more continuous assessment. I hope it is a temporary problem.

On the question of Irish, I will give the Deputy a very subjective answer to her question. My French is much better than my Irish. I can conduct a meeting in French with a French team. On a project in Vietnam, I found myself in a team of six where the other five were French speakers. Naturally, the language du travailwas actually French and that was what you had to live with. Had the working language for that been Irish, I might have had more difficulty and that is a terrible thing to have to say to fellow Irish citizens. I believe it was because, in the teaching of Irish I experienced, I really did not develop a love for the language. I developed an affection for French. I had a great French teacher.

What do we need to solve the problem? It is too late to solve the problem for me, although maybe not. You never stop learning. What do we need to solve the problem in schools? We need to focus on oral Irish and on continuous assessment. We need to focus on the richness of the Irish language. I am not sure whether members heard, there was a poet called Máire and she died-----