Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Question 760: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if he plans to increase the numbers of staff on the second level support service Gaeilge team within the teacher education section of his Department to help improve spoken Gaeilge in schools here; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27437/08]

Batt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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At post primary level, a subject-specific support service for Gaeilge was established in 2007. The service forms part of the Second Level Support (SLSS) which provides programme and subject specific curricular support, and support for implementing new teaching methods in second-level schools. The funding provided for this service is c€0.65m annually.

The support service for Irish has been designed to provide professional development support to second-level teachers of Irish generally. One of the primary objectives of the service is to support the use of Gaeilge as a communicative language in schools and classrooms. The programme of professional development has been designed to:

promote the importance of oral skills as an integral part of the Junior and Leaving Certificate syllabuses

enable teachers develop a range of teaching and learning strategies that will promote oral language proficiency, as recommended in Circular 0042/2007

build on the strengths of the Revised Curriculum for Primary Schools.

The service has just completed its first year of implementation and officials in my Department will review progress made before making future plans for expansion.