Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I again acknowledge the enthusiasm and dedication of the Deputy to this area. At the moment there are 50 posts in Europe. There is potential for approximately 185 posts. My message to leaving certificate students and to the secondary school students in the Gallery is that if they have three languages and two of them are our first language of Irish and Béarla and the third is French, German or Italian, there will be opportunities for them at the end of 2021. Before that, there will be an incremental approach which will involve extra posts before 2021. My message today, along with that of the Deputy, is that there are opportunities. We do not have responsibility or control over the decision on the derogation; it is an EU Council decision.

We make the recommendation, and we have made a very strong recommendation. We are putting our money where our mouth is and providing additional resources for courses in the likes of King's Inns, LYIT in Letterkenny and NUI Galway. My message today to the students in the Gallery and throughout the country is if they have three languages which include Irish, English and a third language, there will be opportunities. After they leave secondary school and if they go to university, they could be living in Strasbourg or Brussels and they would have a nice lifestyle. They could come over and back because it is not too far away.

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