Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I can give the Deputy a note on this. The first answer is, to be very honest, that we do not, nor could we, have a full sense of the total demand. Deputy Ó Cathasaigh got to the heart of that. We know that more than 3,000 of these people are within the age group that might be considered the typical college-going age. However, only a fraction of that number so far has even contacted the helpline. Therefore, we do not know the full demand. We do not know what will happen in the weeks and months ahead.

We do know, as the Deputy has said, that over 200 students have said that they want to sit what I am calling the matriculation exam. We know from the queries that are coming through the helpline that approximately 50% are for places in areas such as business, engineering, psychology, music and art. Approximately 50% of them are in areas like medicine and computer science. That does not mean that because a person wants to study medicine at first, second or third year that they will automatically slot into a place in medicine at first, second or third year. There is therefore a matching exercise under way by this office as to where the person would fit within the Irish higher education system.

On the issue of places, the number is a small fraction of the overall number of places that we will have available. We are trying to keep the discussion going as to how we will manage that demand separate to the CAO process. This is because nobody wants any sort of them and us mentality-----