Professor Áine Hyland:

Senator O'Reilly made very good points. On the Irish language, my personal opinion is that until the Minister gives us her views and decisions on the NCCA report on the overall reform of senior cycle, which I assume will look at leaving certificate applied and so on, the individual syllabi should be changed. There will be major changes. I suggest that the NCCA freeze everything and hold back until it knows. Given what we have heard this morning, we might be optimistic that there may be some very exciting - I do not want to use the word radical - change. In that context, we might be looking at subjects in quite a different way.

Senator Mullen raised a point about competitiveness. Industry is represented on some of the NCCA committees, so its voice is heard. Some of the skills in the framework for senior cycle, with which the Senator may be familiar, take account of the voice of industry. We must keep reminding ourselves when people are critical about undue rote learning and so on that international employers are satisfied that the Irish people whom they recruit, both locally and internationally, do in fact have many of the skills and competitiveness that industry needs. Young people are quite competitive. While some may find the leaving certificate quite stressful, others quite enjoy the element of competition that is engaged. It is a very difficult balance and I take the point on how to satisfy everyone across the spectrum.

On the lottery, I do not know what there is halfway. We could be at a point of change now. The universities and higher education institutions can choose to have some courses chosen by lottery and others not chosen that way. Much of it is a case of logistics. The sheer numbers coming through, 60,000 annually, means that adding something extra is a challenge. The CAO is done entirely by computer. There is no personal intervention between the marks and the places that are offered. Much of what we have discussed this morning would require personal intervention which, with 60,000 new entrants, is quite difficult. I know from interviewing in the very long distant past when we interviewed all students applying for teacher education that it was hugely demanding on time. The numbers then were nowhere near as high as they are today.