Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I absolutely understand the point the Deputy is making. The point that I am making is that in the education system, we do all we can to encourage, support and motivate the students in the Irish language. If they have a particular challenge, which is often identified by themselves, their parents or guardians and if we have worked with them over a considerable length of time and introduced a number of interventions which are still not working and their ability to access the greater curriculum is inhibited, the exemption is awarded.

I say again that we have 1 million students in the system. Some 1.9% of them have an exemption at primary level and in and around 10% have an exemption at post-primary level. That is notwithstanding the fact that 82% of our students take leaving certificate Irish and almost 50% of them do so at higher level. Once they get that exemption in Irish, if they want to try another language, another subject, another whatever within the curriculum – to be fair this is my view and I do not have the statistics in terms of the numbers – it behoves us as educationalists to allow them to access the curriculum and we do all we can to support them in the first instance to access Irish. If that is not possible for a small cohort of them we continue to work with them to allow them to fulfil their educational experience to the widest extent possible and allow them to access any other aspect of the courses or curriculums they wish.