Ms Emily Sheridan:

Going back to the introduction of subjects, engineering was not offered to me. The Central Statistics Office has shown that, as a leaving certificate subject, engineering is mainly run in mixed schools and single sex boys' schools but not in single sex girls' schools. Only 10% of people who take up that subject in mixed schools are women. That is reflected in university, with 8% taking up the subject. It was not run in my school. I did not hear or know about it. When people chose it at university level, I did not know why. I asked what they even knew about it, because I had never heard about it before. I feel like people end up making choices about secondary school, which influences their leaving certificate decisions and their university decisions, at primary level, where they do not have any introduction to subjects at all. They can end up choosing things based on what friends choose and what is offered. People should have the opportunity to choose those subjects early on. If there is not an initial large uptake, it will still grow as time goes on. Sometimes, subjects are offered and then are cancelled after having small uptakes. They cannot continue to grow and have increased uptake if they are removed immediately.