Ms Bernie McNally:

If I could come in on that, the Deputy mentioned the word "failure" a lot and I have to counter that a little. I absolutely accept there are problems in many areas, but first and foremost, the Deputy opened this discussion by talking about us needing places. We do everything we can to ensure every child gets a place, and we can give him numbers on that. Sometimes, however, in a small number of cases relative to the 1 million children who are in the system, we have to spend money on rental, but that can be justified. We are doing everything we can to minimise it, but our first priority is to make sure children and young people have a school place, and that is what we do.

Second, the Deputy mentioned failing children and young people. The facts are the quality of the education system in Ireland is the envy of the world and we have hard data that shows we do provide high-quality education.