Ms Evelyn O'Connor:

As the Deputy will be aware, teacher supply is a challenge at the moment notwithstanding that the CAO also shows an increase of 11% in first preference applications for post-primary undergraduate initial teacher education, ITE, programmes. Currently 118,000 teachers are registered of whom 22,000 teachers are registered in the in the STEM area. The Department is taking short-term, medium-term and more long-term steps to try to address what I suppose we could call the teacher supply crisis at present. The Department is providing additional places. Places like UL and the University of Galway have provided two-year upskilling courses to create more places and get more teachers upskilled to be able to teach and fill gaps where we have them. I do not know if the particular case of teachers with PhDs has been examined. The Teaching Council has created a new route 5 which allows student teachers to teach in schools and that would count towards their qualification.