Robbie Gallagher (Fianna Fail)
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The second question I was going to ask has been in answered in the response to Deputy Thomas Byrne. It related to the work to predict future demand by using demographics. As to how we arrived at this point, has that body of work been missing up to now? We now seem to have a crisis that has crept up on us. Could we not have predicted this bottleneck a bit further down the road and been in a position to do something about it before now?

As Deputy Thomas Byrne said, pay equality for teachers is vital. A campaign to attract them back to Ireland deserves attention, but things are a bit more complex than that. I know many young teachers who decided to go abroad because they could not get full-time positions. However, many of them left in order to try to save enough money in order that they might come back and buy homes. This issue goes beyond the Department of Education and Skills; it also relates to the cost of housing. There is a lot more involved. Based on the current pace, how long will it take to address the existing bottleneck.