Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

That is very good. The second issue I want to raise is centres of excellence in terms of teacher training education. I think a number of centres of excellence were prescribed as far back as the 1970s. An educational facility could not put on a teacher training course unless it was nominated as a centre of excellence. I am again coming at this from a regional perspective. Some 600,000 people who are within an hour of Waterford look to Waterford for services. I know the Chair will have an interest in this as well. Anybody who wants to engage in teacher training – I was one of those and I had to go to the Marino Institute in Dublin in order to do my teacher training - must go either to Dublin, Limerick or Cork if they want to become a secondary teacher. We have a perfectly functioning education department in SETU but it cannot provide teacher training. Is this something the Department is aware of and is it looking at it because we are short of teachers in many subjects? If we could provide a pathway for teacher education through TUs - to be parochial about it, in SETU, it would be very welcome both in terms of the provision of teachers and keeping young people within their own region.