Mr. John Boyle:

On the mobility issue, we have an office in Belfast and we have 7,200 members in the North. I cross the Border at least every fortnight in relation to work. When I head up to my family in Donegal, I would be up there at least twice a month as well. I have seen exactly the same as Deputy Brendan Smith. The closer we get to the Border, the more there are cars with Northern Ireland registrations outside schools in the South and vice versa. These are not all workers. Parents are involved as well. The insight we got from the report on Monday was very interesting. It was undertaken by Ulster University on education along the Border. Three geographical areas along the Border were studied. The full report has not been issued yet, but the university will be holding a big public event in the Farnham Estate hotel in County Cavan at 1 p.m. on Monday, 23 September.

What we have noticed, though, is that the communities there really value their local schools. For many of them, the Border is totally immaterial. They do not even see it. The school that is nearest them has a great reputation. I am not a bit surprised by that because, for example, according to test scores in literacy and numeracy, our children in the North are sometimes doing better or at least equally well as children in South, despite all the challenges they have in the system in the North. It is the value of the local school that is important and it gives me great hope that there is this type of mobility at such a young level, with children crossing the Border and their parents are bringing them. The difficulty then comes when they get a bit older. The other report that came out about student mobility at third level did not find what is happening at the lower primary or secondary levels carrying through. The other issue then translates into the workforce, where there is not the same transferability either.

The Teaching Council is much maligned sometimes. We had a meeting with its director and chair the week before last, and the Teaching Council itself is meeting next week. One of the key issues for us at that meeting was that there appear to be barriers to teachers who train in the North working in the South. The director and chair were very keen to point out that they did not feel there are such barriers and, furthermore, that they were going to undertake a communications plan in this regard to try to convince teachers training in the North. As I said, there is particular interest in the primary teachers who train in St. Mary's University College, who have Gaeilge. There are many Gaelscoileanna in the North, of course, but there may be more opportunities for those teachers to work in the South. That would be a good starting point, and then perhaps this could be developed further. I do not think the barriers are anywhere close to what they used to be, however. When we started campaigning on this issue some years ago it was taking at least 12 weeks for a teacher who had trained in Northern Ireland or the UK to register with the Teaching Council. The waiting time is now down to three weeks, so improvements have definitely been made.