Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. What he has been telling us about is most important; the 87,000 registered people will have a major role to play in the future of this country. They always have. I do not want to be defensive, but some of the people who have made negative comments about Irish education were the very people who in 2008 were so incompetent in their own fields that education must now rectify that. The quality of Brendan Kennelly's poetry did not deteriorate in 2008, but the quality of banking, insurance and many other industries did, and hence we are left with the bill.

The process of learning is collegiate in nature. Teachers should group around their subject areas, come back to their old departments and see what the developments are in the current year in economics, geography, science and so on. Field trips are extremely valuable. I know the Minister wishes to have the same enthusiasm at second level that he feels has been generated at primary level by a curriculum change, rather than have this very strong domination by an exam system. Field trips and visits to schools by figures in public life, the world of business and the world of sport could be the days that students will remember when they have finished their education. There is room for great partnerships. The professionalism of education which this measure promotes is most valuable.

At third level, it should be expected that all subjects should be supplying the teachers. The Minister referred to how we get an adequate supply of people for the STEM subjects. How do we tackle the language problem? It has been a tradition that only certain academic departments produce the next generation of higher diploma graduates, but they should all be eligible. In planning for these changes, if we had an Italian teacher, could we have that person teaching Italian in about three or four schools, rather than teaching subjects outside their professional degree? There is a problem whereby teachers are teaching subjects for which they have not got the degree qualification. Perhaps some co-operation between schools and more flexible arrangements might lead to a better result all round.

There is a need for education departments in universities to relate to all of the subjects. Perhaps in the past, the links to science, technology, engineering and maths have not been strong enough. It is a problem, as the Minister has said, trying to get an adequate listing of how many maths teachers actually have a qualification in the subject. It was always held in the past that one of the difficulties with the revival of the Irish language was that at the foundation of the State, there were not that many people who had qualifications. Students are very astute. They will know whether one teacher is skilled and qualified in the subject, while the other teacher is not. That professionalism is most important, because there are no more astute consumers than the pupils themselves.

We still have to look at the problem of untrained and temporary teachers, as part of professionalism------