Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

That is an important matter and we have a range of initiatives in respect of it. The main initiative is the professional development service for teachers, PDST. We also have a national scheme in place which supports in-career development for teachers. In addition, education centres throughout the country organise courses for teachers and enable them to engage in further career development and learning. Across a number of areas we have in place a range of continuous professional development programmes. We fully accept that we have been obliged to reduce funding in this area in recent years. We reduced overall funding for continuous professional development from approximately €23.7 million to just over €19 million from 2008 to early 2013. We made special arrangements and put a dedicated team in place in respect of project maths to facilitate the roll-out of that subject.