Dr. Ciarán Mac an Bhaird:

I can add one point to that. Speaking from the perspective of NUI Maynooth, the only impact we can talk about is that we have had to change some of the modules we are teaching first-year students in statistics because we have had to up the level. We now putting elements of second-year courses into the first-year courses because we found that students now know the stuff we were teaching in first year. That is just one small factor relating to statistics, which is approximately one third or one quarter of first-year mathematics. That is only a small snapshot and I agree with Mr. O'Sullivan that we must wait.

In respect of the question about how many tutors we would like, you are going to give someone from Monaghan a cheque. It is very hard to give a definitive answer because the needs of each institution are different. There are 22 tutors working in the mathematics support centre in NUI Maynooth, but this ranges. Some people have one or two hours. Some are postgraduates while some are undergraduates because we have an issue with sourcing good tutors, so we have to spread it out. It is a difficult one to answer but we provide something like 127 tutor hours per week. It is different in the different institutions. I can certainly do another survey and ask around North and South and we can get people to come back and say what a definite figure would be but I could not give the committee a-----