Mr. Michael Gillespie:

I thank the Senator. One of the big things is the support students get before they fill in the CAO form in schools. Over the past ten years, we have had serious cutbacks in the career guidance structure. We have only one guidance counsellor in a school of 700. We have schools below a certain level that do not have guidance counsellors. The idea where we had pastoral care pre-2009 and teachers who were year heads has all been cut back over the past ten years. The individual care we have been capable of giving to every student has been radically reduced. It is not that students may not be able for the course; they just might not have an interest in it. They pick the wrong route and that is because people have not focused on and supported them. People fall through the cracks.

Giving us more places in college is only one aspect. They will be eaten up by the demographic increase over the next couple of years of people going to leaving certificate. It is about preparedness and focusing minds on doing the right thing. There is nothing wrong, as was said earlier, with going off to do an apprenticeship and then doing a degree years later. One might be a better engineer for that. We have to open people's minds to the different routes available and that can only be done by supporting them in school with enough proper guidance counsellors and pastoral care systems that spot students who are a little lost and putting down the wrong choices because external reasons have told them to put them down and not to waste X number of points, as Mr. Jones said. People fill it in for the wrong reasons.