Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent)
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307. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason it is not possible to complete registration on the Teaching Council’s online portal through the medium of the Irish language; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [16308/24]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Under the Teaching Council Acts 2001-2015 the Teaching Council is the body with the statutory authority and responsibility for the regulation of the teaching profession in Ireland including the registration of teachers in the State.

The Teaching Council is the professional standards body for the teaching profession, which promotes and regulates professional standards in teaching. The Teaching Council registers teachers under the Teaching Council Act 2001-2015 and in line with the Teaching Council Registration Regulations, 2016. The Council registers teachers under five routes of registration namely, Route 1 - Primary, Route 2 - Post-primary, Route 3 - Further Education, Route 4 - Other and Route 5 - Student Teacher. The minimum registration requirements for each route are set out in the Schedule of the Regulations.

The Teaching Council has confirmed that the Irish language version of their online portal went live in July 2023 with the vast majority of the portal available through Irish.

The Teaching Council has informed me that since then, they have been, and continue to, proactively take steps to ensure that the online registration renewal process can be completed fully in Irish. As it stands, almost all parts of the online portal are available in Irish.

For reasons of functionality, a very small number of fields on the online renewal process are not available in Irish and currently display in English. However, the Teaching Council is actively working with its third-party supplier to rectify this as soon as possible.

It remains a high priority for the Teaching Council to fully implement the Irish language version of the My Registration portal and they have assured me that they are committed to having the online portal fully available in Irish as soon as possible.

In the interim, the Teaching Council can support the renewal of registration fully through Irish over the phone or by providing a paper-based option.