Mr. Eamonn Moran:

There were two questions about foreign languages and Irish. I mentioned earlier that among the new leaving certificate subject specifications introduced in recent years were four new foreign language specifications: Polish, Lithuanian, Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese. These arose essentially from the Department's foreign languages strategy, Languages Connect, which was published a few years ago. It is a strategy to ensure an increased take-up of languages by students and also to seek to improve the teaching and learning of foreign languages. We have a body under the Department's umbrella called Post-Primary Languages Ireland, which assists schools in rolling out the new language specifications. One of the issues we have is that for each new language specification that is introduced, fairly small cohorts of students are currently taking them. They are spread across the country. Post-Primary Languages Ireland is working to assist those schools and provide additional supports to them to assist take-up of the languages. Those four new language specifications that I mentioned come out of a common framework for the development of new language specifications. That is why we were able to roll out Polish, Portuguese and Lithuanian more or less at the same time. Within the leaving certificate there is a facility for students to take some non-curricular languages. These are EU languages that are not currently taught in schools. Our foreign languages strategy is approaching its mid stage. We will review it.

On Irish language learning, I repeat the point that Mr. Tattan made. The review of the implementation of junior cycle Irish, the new specification for junior cycle Irish, which was in the form of both a language 1 and a language 2 specification, will be completed in time to feed into the development and finalisation of the specification for leaving certificate Irish.