James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely. Some work is being done on external authenticators. We will come back to the Deputy on that.

As regards the teacher model, I am keen to take up that discussion further. It is something I would like to explore. If the Deputy wants to arrange something, I would be happy to do that as well. We will have to engage with the unions as well and see what the views of the professional bodies are, but it would be a very helpful contribution at a time when we need to improve and increase the numbers of graduate teachers. If there are other ways to bring them into the system, I am all for it. The same goes across a number of professions at the moment.