Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Ó thaobh na múinteoirí de, from the point of view of the teachers and the need to support them and get as many of them as possible confident in the teaching of Irish, very significant work is going on in this area.

Specifically, the Deputy referred to teachers in the Gaeltacht and the need for them to have a particular caighdeán or standard. For example, 10% of places in the teaching colleges, supported by the State, are made available to those coming from the Gaeltacht who want to go into teaching. The bachelor of education through Irish is fully covered by the Department and we have doubled the places available there, mindful that there is a need from a Gaeltacht point of view to be doing all we can to support teachers coming from that area. We have also recently tendered for upskilling in Irish for staff who are already in place and wish to upskill. We have run that programme very successfully in other subject areas and there has been a huge uptake of it. We are now rolling out the programme in Irish as well.

The Deputy referenced the e-hub and the teaching of physics and chemistry. That e-hub is catering for nine post-primary schools and has been very successful. The Deputy is correct - tá an ceart aige ó thaobh Covid. We learned a lot about how we can do things online and all of that. That programme is running as well. We constantly have continuing professional development, CPD, being made available within our schools. We have a very good Gaeilge Bheo! programme, which is a live and interactive programme online that is available to staff. We have post-primary advisers specifically in the area of Gaeilge working in our schools. There is also the Tionól Teagaisc, the conference for teachers of Irish. In our primary schools we have the content and language integrated learning, CLIL, programme with PE through Irish and all of that. There is a huge amount of work taking place at the moment. We have given additional resources to COGG to promote and run programmes that would be supportive of the Irish language and upskilling for staff.

Specifically on the strategy, I absolutely-----