Mr. John Boyle:

No. Quite a considerable cohort of those who work in the South actually trained to be a teacher in the UK. The basic degree for teaching is the bachelor of education degree, and that is offered in various institutions in Belfast - the two colleges, Stranmillis and St. Mary's. It is offered in various other institutions across Great Britain.

There is another route into teaching which is a post-graduate route. Here, in the Republic, that is a two-year add-on course. If one does one's degree - any degree - one does an extra two years. Much of it is school based, more so even in post-primary. The second year of it is fully school based in post-primary whereas in primary, there is teaching practice or school placement throughout the two years. In the UK, there are a number of courses like that. The Teaching Council obviously watches this closely because it is all about the quality and there would be some worrying trends in teacher training internationally. The Teaching Council is not likely to register teachers unless they achieve a particular bar.

The Irish qualification was mentioned earlier. Our position on it is that we agree with the approach that is taken at present where teachers are given up to three years to achieve the qualification. In a new Ireland, we may, indeed, have to change our position on that because there is absolutely no way that we as a union would want to force teachers who had no basis for the Irish language, or maybe not that much interest in it, to have it in order to be accredited to work on the island. There is a three-year period to achieve it but the difficulty is that the Government does not provide any support to anybody to reach the bar. There are a number of ways to achieve it but in terms of having to study for it or courses that are made available, they are generally made available from private institutions at significant cost. At a time of a teacher supply crisis, it makes eminent sense to me, with the wonderful teachers who would like to work in Ireland, whether they are from the North or from any other part of the world, that they would get some assistance to achieving the qualification. That would be for primary.

For post-primary, the so-called scrúdú cáilíochta is not as big an issue. Nevertheless, we have to look at creative ways of increasing teacher supply and that the teaching workforce would reflect the diversity in our communities. We did a piece of work with Maynooth University in the Turn to Teaching initiative around diversity in the teaching profession. There is much work going on to encourage those who would not traditionally have been primary teachers in Ireland to join the profession but it is not well funded. It is slow progress. We would like to see much more done in that space too.