James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputy. Regarding the disability courses, I can get her a note on the detail. To give some broad-brush details, nine different disciplines were identified in consultations with the Minister for Health, the Minister for education, and the Minister for disabilities as the priority areas to be front-loaded into the new provision. These included occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech and language therapy, educational psychologists, dieticians and a few other related disciplines but they were primarily in the therapy and healthcare spaces. The proposal I brought to the Cabinet yesterday, and that was approved, is to increase the provision of these disciplines for this September. I asked the HEA to seek formal expressions of interest and engage with the colleges to determine who was in a position to ramp up quickly and add capacity to the system for this September.

A number of institutions of different types and from right across the country, including the TUs, the universities and a number of different institutions, responded. I thank them for their engagement and rapid response. The majority of these courses, with some 320 places, will start this September, with a further 141 places to follow the September after. The 320 places will repeat and will be there every year from now on, but an additional 141 places will also be coming on stream the following September. Additionally, I wish to engage with further education providers and examine apprenticeship routes. We have a concept called RPL, recognition of prior learning, where we accept that people who have previous relevant experience may be able to bring that to bear. There may be some kind of accelerated graduate entry programme recognising such previous relevant experience for those people. We can get the Deputy a note on these details as well.