Dr. Jim Gleeson:

Clearly, a lottery would have to have ground rules. The fine detail would be critical. I take Professor Hyland's point on interviews. We tried them out in Thomond College a long time ago. Reliability was a huge problem with interviews, with multiple interview panels involved.

On Senator Mullen's question on industry and so on, human capital needs have tended to dictate Irish education policy very strongly for many years. Of course, those needs are important but, as Professor Collins and others said, social capital is equally important and is being recognised as such, even at OECD level. As with all the balances we have been talking about, that is a critical balance.

I thank Senator O'Reilly for her remarks about the leaving certificate applied. As Professor Stobart said, both it and transition year give the possibility of beginning to reimagine the established leaving certificate. They can be the stimulus and the foundation of that. We need to look at them in that way.