Ms Deirdre Matthews:

Regarding making the qualification for leadership compulsory, we should bear in mind that our counterparts across the water did that a number of years ago and have now rescinded on it because it becomes more of a paper exercise rather than a qualification for leadership. I agree with the IPPN suggestion that it should be incentivised rather than being compulsory. It could be partly incentivised by how the recruitment is done because the school boards of management have a certain amount of leeway in the elements they take into consideration when recruiting leaders. That is one way to incentivise it. I am sure we can discuss other ways of doing so with the IPPN and NAPD.