Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join with my colleagues today to pay condolences to family of Mr. Noel Treacy from Gurteen, Ballinasloe. It is a really sad loss. He was a proud student at Garbally College in our town. He was an auctioneer and a public servant for his community and this country through the 1980s and 1990s for Galway East. He was also an advocate for the west. He never forgot where he came from. Locally in Ballinasloe there is a lot of recognition for Mr. Noel Treacy's achievements. As our local Ballinasloe Lifemagazine has said, he was a very gregarious, affable and generous east Galway man who never turned away a constituent or an organisation.

The leaving certificate examination is a very difficult time for students. It is very important that measures have been put in place by the Department of Education to offer extra questions and to reduce the amount of time. This is crucial to ensuring that our students will be prepared for life after college. I note that in the CAO form now there is, thanks to the Minister, Deputy Harris, all the further and higher education options and all the apprenticeship posts, and under the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, more than 6,000 places were provided in the past two years to increase the numbers of places at third level institutions. I am aware that the Minister, Deputy Harris, will be doing his utmost to ensure that higher education institutes will be able to provide more places also.