Ms Deirdre McDonnell:

I outlined in my opening statement the process in place on new entrant pay. That is an issue across the public service. On the diaspora, I also mentioned in the opening statement that we will have a communications campaign and that will be targeted at the broadest public to create and generate interest. That is particularly important in the current labour market where there are other competing opportunities for graduates. We are competing with industry for people but we are still getting high interest in teacher education programmes. That is very welcome.

On oversupply, the Deputy will be pleased to know that I am leading on the data and research working group that is looking at modelling what we require in supply and demand over the next number of years. Policy impacts on how many teachers we need to have in the system so we will be looking at demographics. My colleague, Mr. Ward, mentioned some of the policy initiatives coming down the road in respect of matters such as the junior cycle. That is at post-primary level but different policy initiatives impact on the number of teachers required and teacher-pupil ratios, etc. All those things need to be fed into a model and we need to work out over a number of years the forecast we need in the system.

We can look at supply and demand issues across both primary and post-primary in that context. I did some work on forecasting in higher education when I worked in that system, and what is unique for the teachers is that the substitute requirement has to be built as well. Substitute issues do not have to be tackled when dealing with industry because the overall requirement is being dealt with. In the primary sector in particular, we do have to build in that need and that issue has been addressed in the Striking the Balance report. Demographics is another issue at post primary level. The Deputy is right that we have a shorter list of immediate concerns raised by the school management bodies but demographics will impact on all subjects. The shortages are not the same in every subject and that is why looking at subject level requirements is so important at post-primary level.