Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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It would be good to have a kind of formalised approach. We all know of different workplaces and different community organisations where there could be an excellent principal who has a massive focus on this. Another principal might be dealing with something else because they are extremely busy people.

I might move away from that topic. In her opening statement, Ms O'Connor spoke about the shortage of STEM teachers. This also came up last week. Have we ever looked at people who would have done PhDs? In my own school we had a teacher who had done a PhD in biology and he was then doing the course to become a secondary school teacher. Obviously, people with PhDs have to do teaching and in third level. Someone going to teach at secondary level needs to learn the curriculum and all that kind of thing. It is a two-year course on top of having done X number of years already at university. Have we ever looked at making it easier for people who already have say a PhD with that teaching experience at third level to have a quicker route into secondary school teaching? I do not come from a secondary school teaching background so Ms O'Connor can tell me if she thinks I am totally wrong on that. However, given we have that shortage, has something like that has been looked at?