Dr. Carmel Halton:

On the Senator's first question regarding high quality calibre placements, currently placements are required by CORU to have certain regulations associated with them. All supervisors must have training and qualification in supervision. The Senator will recall what Professor Norris said. We have always had a tradition in the universities of going directly to practice educators, to supervisors and to social workers and asking them to take our students on placement. Now we have to make sure they comply with all the regulations - which is a good thing, we are not saying it is a bad thing, that they are registered social workers with CORU, that they have training and education in the supervision of students and that they are in post for at least a year. That is what we mean by high calibre in that there are regulations associated with the recruitment of people to do this really important work