Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I understand what the Deputy is saying. If it was being allocated on the basis of giving every county a fair shot and one county was being left out, the Deputy would rightly feel aggrieved, but that was not the approach. It is a model that will go countrywide. What we are trying to do in the first phase is get a selection of schools across a range of school types to ensure we have ironed out any glitches and that we have the right sort of professional support for teachers and that if we discover or identify weaknesses that we improve the professional support team that is in place. It was not an attempt to pass judgment on the quality of the applications. We accepted schools that were in a position to participate which might not have been schools of sporting excellence in an area. The schools have been independently selected. The purpose of the selection was to ensure we road-test in as effective a way as possible the 80 schools, the frameworks - the leaving certificate examinable and the framework that is not being examined - to make sure we are in a position to deal with any challenges it throws up. What has been done is entirely independent. There has been no direction of any sort given to the steering group. It has made the selection to best deliver the objective of the curriculum development.

I have to stand over the quality of the work being done despite acknowledging that the Deputy has misgivings about what has happened. It was done in the best interest of having a nationwide quality PE programme in place from 2020.

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