Mr. Gary Ó Donnchadha:

Briefly, the Deputy asked about the number of inspectors and so on and whether our capacity was sufficient. Like all other public services, we certainly were affected by reductions in our numbers. Our numbers fell from approximately 166 staff towards the end of the noughties down to 116 staff. While there was quite a substantial drop, our focus was on getting the highest impact from the staff resource we had. Many of the reforms about which members read in the chapter in the chief inspector's report on the reconfiguration of our inspection have pertained to getting the highest impact we can from the available staff resources. Fortunately, our numbers have risen a little with the sanction we have received lately for recruitment and at present, our staff number is approximately 124 inspectors.

I mentioned the school self-evaluation initiative earlier and we took a decision to scale down slightly whole school evaluations. Consequently, our numbers at primary level are slightly down in order to be able to cover all 3,300 primary schools with a school self-evaluation support visit. However, these numbers will come back up again in future years. The other point members will note in the report is that through using this blend of unannounced visits and whole school evaluations, we have a much higher footprint in schools than we have ever had. Our current rate of coverage is approximately one in six years at primary level and one in two to three years at post-primary level, which constitutes a significant improvement on the coverage we were able to get in previous years when we were relying simply on a whole school inspection model to try to cover the country. This twin-track approach of coverage on the one hand and targeting resources using short-form inspections is working very well for us to get coverage.