Mr. Michael Gillespie:

The recruitment and retention crisis has now got a third leg. It is a three-legged stool in that we now have a massive number of teachers who are teaching out of their field to try to make up for this. These are teachers who are not qualified in the subject but for whatever reason, find themselves teaching it. We now have recruitment and retention issues and out-of-field teaching in every school. As they have always done, schools are making do. They are replacing subjects with other subjects, if they are lucky. However, in most schools, they are getting rid of subjects. Subject choice is reducing because of a lack of teachers. Schools do not want to publicise that they cannot recruit teachers because they think it reflects badly on the school. A lot of this stuff is being kept secret. One of the problems is that nobody knows how bad it is. Parents may think that their son or daughter cannot do home economics because it is only in one group, whereas it used to be in three groups. The reason it is now only in one group is that they did not replace the teacher who retired last year. A certain school may not be able to offer woodwork or construction studies at leaving certificate any more. Why? The answer is that the school now has only one construction teacher because it could not replace the one who retired or resigned. This is what we are seeing. The Deputy is right that trying to do leaving certificate reform when we have recruitment and retention issues and out-of-field teachers across the system just adds another layer of complexity to a difficult situation.