Mr. Michael Gillespie:

I will take the LCA first. Parity of esteem is the crucial thing. A one-time Senator, Feargal Quinn, was a real benefactor of the LCA programme. He saw the advantage in how it prepared students. We need to invest in the LCA so that it has parity of esteem, especially for those going into apprenticeships. It goes back to what Mr. Ó Caoimh said as well. The leaving certification examination is not just an entrance exam for third level education. It must work for all other pathways, and that includes apprenticeships. That is the reason for the LCA. It is a genuine course and works well but it does not have parity of esteem.

There is no point in someone saying in an announcement about senior cycle redevelopment that maths will be made available to the LCA in parallel to it being made available in the leaving certificate examination without giving the resources to the schools to be able to timetable those students. It is great to have it up here, but the resources are needed to implement it. Much of this stuff is resource driven. Transition year is the same. If transition year is to be meaningful and feed into the sciences, discrete budgets for transition year are needed so that the sciences can prepare the basic core ways of doing practical things. In third level at the moment, it takes people three years to prepare to do a fourth year project. We are trying to prepare people to do projects for a high-stakes exam from January to the following January with no investment. A lot of it comes down to investment of time by teachers and financial investment in our schools.