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

To change tack, I want to ask about the large number of children from Ukraine we are accommodating. It has been said that approximately 18,200 has been enrolled in primary and secondary schools. The Department probably has a good picture of mobility in terms of how often these children are moved from school to school. It probably has a reasonable line of sight on how many children are no longer in the jurisdiction. We know this is happening. My question is a little bit broader than this. Approximately 18,000 kids have joined our school system. Some of them are here for good and more of them are not. Doing a horribly rough calculation of dividing this figure by 25, which is the average pupil-teacher ratio, there are approximately 728 extra teachers in the system. I am sure it is more than this because of the specific needs. Are we forward modelling? If we have 1,000 teachers or more in the system due to the number of Ukrainian children who have come into it, do we have a plan to cope if a large number of these Ukrainian children leave? I recognise that the demographic bulge is passing through secondary school at present. Are we forward planning for this? We certainly do not want a situation where a large number of teachers are found to be superfluous.