Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister and Minister of State for their presentations. At this stage, I suppose, many queries have already been answered. I will ask the Minister about flexibility in terms of school numbers. I can give a case in point around a DEIS school in Fahy in Westport. They have seen numbers increase immensely in the past few years and the school currently has 114 pupils on the roll. That will guarantee the school the appointment of a new teacher next year. However, there has been an unexpected large number of new entrants this year, with the result that it now has 36 pupils in junior and senior infants, with 31 pupils in first and second class. We are still in the midst of a pandemic and trying to make schools as safe as possible. I ask, therefore, that such cases could be looked at to see if we can address those positions of having 36 pupils or 31 pupils in the same classrooms, with teachers trying to manage them. Some flexibility around that would be really good.

I very much welcome the statement around the additional administrative leave days for principals. How are the decisions made around that to provide for substitution arrangements? How is it decided?

We clearly need more teachers to meet the demand we have but we have seen that the CAO points for primary teaching are now as high as 522, largely because of the cap on undergraduate places. The reason given previously for this cap was to control supply but what happens in reality if students are pushed to the master's degree courses that are predominantly in one very expensive private college that now trains approximately half the teachers? I will ask the committee to look at this but when will the Minister sign off on the intake figures for the 2022-23 academic year? I know this is something that certainly needs changing. I have a number of other questions but I realise I have very limited time. Will the Minister address those two questions first?