Professor Ciar?n ? h?gartaigh:

On the question on school completion rates, I am not au faitwith the detail but Dr. Soares is here. I do not want to put him on the spot. The Centre for Cross Border Studies provides a secretariat to Universities Ireland. We might be able to find more detail on that because it is an issue that is close to all of our hearts in the context of participation rates more generally.

In the context of our statement, our sense is that one of the reasons there is an anomalous equivalence between A-levels and the leaving certificate is because the leaving certificate has a much broader population. A smaller proportion of the population study for A-levels, therefore there is less of a tail. We do not have the bottom quartile and so on that we have with the leaving certificate.

We think that is one of the reasons the original study did not take into account different participation and completion rates. We need to look at that again and we will commit to doing that. At the risk of sounding like Father Ted, the requirement for Gaeilge is an ecumenical matter in a way because the Teaching Council decides what the requirements are for teachers. As a representative of Universities Ireland, I could not comment but it may be a matter the committee could raise with the Teaching Council at that level. We are committing to look at the language requirements more generally, which the report talks about, but language requirements for bunoideachas or bunmhúinteoireacht are a much more complex matter than I could comment on.