Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

There are a number of approaches being taken at the moment to try to support teachers at primary and post-primary and, in particular, new and innovative ways in which technology is helping. There are the new gteic hubs where principals, through the medium of Irish, are able to teach certain subjects to other schools, including the one they are in, using video technology and otherwise. That has been successful in making sure that schools that would not ordinarily be able to do physics or certain subjects because they could not find a teacher proficient in Irish can now do that. It is working successfully in some areas. Second, there are sharing arrangements in place whereby Gaeltacht schools or Gaelscoileanna are able to share teachers and teach subjects where schools are essentially pooling the resources. Again, that is working successfully.

A new plan will be published in September, following on from the Gaeltacht plan, and it has a number of these measures in place. This is specifically looking at Gaelscoileanna and Gaelcholáistí and then a separate plan around English-speaking schools teaching Irish. All of these issues are being looked at, such as teacher retention, how we encourage more teachers into the system and how we make sure that all schools are able to access the different supports.