Deirdre Clune (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I agree the Discover Science and Engineering Programme is excellent and I met Leo Enright recently in Cork. However, science student numbers are down 4.5%, particularly in computer science. We are not generating the interest or the pool of students to feed our third level courses. The Minister for Education and Science changed the leaving certificate examination timetable this week but the science subjects did not feature. Interest at second level must be generated to ensure students take up third level courses in the future. The Minister of State also seems to have different figures from mine.

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