Dr. Lynn Ramsey:

On the engagement with teacher unions, we have a 37-member council and its composition is laid out in statute. Some people are directly elected to the council, so we have a significant number of teachers. It is a teacher-led regulatory body. Specifically on the issue of the unions, as we were discussing with the Cathaoirleach, we have engagement with several stakeholders, including the teacher unions. The deputy director and I meet with the teacher unions twice a year and we also attend the teacher union conferences.

In relation to teachers who qualified outside Ireland, and I am assuming the Deputy's query refers to those who are not already registered, with whom we will deal separately, if we receive an application from a teacher who qualified outside Ireland, we are bound by the terms of the EU directive on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications. It requires us to review an application and process it within 12 weeks. Before we commenced our review process, and we have two stages of it, we were processing those applications within 11 weeks. In 2023, we got this time down to eight weeks. Our head of initial teacher education induction can take the Deputy through the stages of that review process if that might be helpful. To date in 2024, we are processing these applications within seven weeks.

Regarding any teacher who was on the register and who lapsed from it for whatever reason, as of the end of January of this year, we have a new tailored process for any teacher wishing to register. Ms Healy, our head of registration, can take the Deputy through all the stages of that process. The working timelines for that process are that those applications are processed within four weeks.