We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
MINISTER FOR EDUCATION Richard Bruton has today announced an expansion of the number of places on post primary teacher education courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.
The move follows claims by a Fianna Fáíl TD Thomas Byrne that a real crisis exists in the teaching sector and that the demand for substitute teachers is vastly exceeding supply at both primary and second-level and that there is a major challenge for schools in finding teachers with the right subject mixes.
The numbers graduating from post primary teacher education courses have remained steady over the past number of years but the number of students entering the education system is increasing and will continue to do so until 2025, according to Bruton.
He said that universities will increase the capacity on undergraduate initial teacher education programmes by an estimated 280 places this year. This will include an increase in priority areas such as science, technology, engineering, maths, Irish and foreign languages.
Announcing these new measures, Bruton said. “The quality of our teachers and school leaders is the number one factor which will influence the outcome for the child and we are very lucky in Ireland to have high quality teachers.
Some concerns have been raised recently around teacher supply issues. I have previously announced some measures to support schools in managing these issues, including expanding the number of days a teacher can work while on a career break. Today, I am taking further action by expanding the number of places on teacher education programmes with a heavy emphasis on certain subject areas at post primary level, to ensure that schools can get the right mix of subject teachers.
Fianna Fáíl’s education spokesperson Thomas Byrne said that teacher shortages will have serious ramifications in physics and Irish especially.
“Ongoing pay inequality has resulted in a recruitment and retention crisis for teachers and there are also major difficulties for schools in securing substitute teachers when required.”
Byrne’s stance is backed by Teachers Union of Ireland President Joanne Irwin, who said:
“All education stakeholders now acknowledge that there is an unprecedented crisis in the recruitment and retention of teachers. However, it is regrettable in the extreme, and foolish, that the government is still refusing to acknowledge or commit to the only guaranteed cure.
“Over recent months, there have been various suggestions of measures to attract teachers to particular subject areas, many of which would set a dangerous precedent of prioritising particular subjects based on the perceived and short-term needs of industry at a given moment in time. Most of these measures are no more than gimmicks and have not been fully thought out.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Mmmmh, where are all the pro swedish muppets now. Look at at Sweden, Sweden didn’t go into lock down, why should we.
There’s very few countries handled this right. And hindsight is a wonderful thing. Once it’s all over in 18 months or 2 years or so, then we can say who were the good children in class and who dropped the pooch.
@Karl Mc Cauley: I believe one “screws the pooch”. One “drops the ball”. Good comment nonetheless. Carry on…
@David Clements: kept refusing to post, had to change several words to make it PC enough to post.
@Karl Mc Cauley: Taiwan appear to have handled it pretty excellently. But of course they were kicked out of the UN in the 1970s…a motion Ireland voted in favour of, and by extension are not in WHO.
@Joe Vlogs: mass surveillance of their citizens….no thanks you can keep it
@Karl Mc Cauley: If you look at the deaths per capita between us and them there is not much in it……you are not factoring in the amount of deaths that will occurs after this this because of the economic fallout, which will be far far greater than the virus itself.
@Peter Hughes: Sweden will also suffer the economic fallout though. Their central bank predicts a contraction of their economy which falls within the range of most of the rest of Europe, between 6.5-9.7% It seems there have been only small economic benefits to the no lockdown model. Conversely the reduction of death has also been relatively small. Given this I’d take the small benefits to the protection of life.
Is the bear a catholic?
@Peter Hughes: ‘not much in it’ is about 500 deaths as it stands. You post with crystal ball certainty that deaths from the economic fallout will far exceed this, so what is your ballpark estimate of this number? And how would you come to such an estimate?
@Peter Hughes: Stop comparing Ireland and Sweden! Different environment, genetics, population density, culture, health infrastructure etc. Far better to compare near neighbors to try and counteract all these factors. Eg Ireland v Scotland and Wales. Or Sweden v Denmark, Norway, Finland. Sweden has done much much worse than its Scandinavian neighbours. At the moment there is no disputing that. The major difference was the lockdown measures. But happy to hear of alternative explanations. Maybe long term it will look like the right call. E.g. They got the majority of their deaths out of the way in a condensed period of time. And the rest of us are just prolonging the inevitable. But we can only judge on data available today. And on that data it looks like they made poor decisions and ended up with multiples of deaths v their neighbours as a result
@NotMyIreland: Unemployment will be at 14 percent after the dust settles here, Sweden’s will be 9 percent.
GDP we will see its hard to tell but there will be a big difference.
@James F Davis: We have the youngest population in the EU so we done far far worse considering…..this virus kills the elderly in the vast majority or cases.
@Karl Mc Cauley:
Sweden >90% of COVID deaths are over 65.
Ireland >90% of COVID deaths are over 65.
Want to keep COVID numbers down: protect the elderly and vulnerable.
@Peter Hughes: I’m comparing with Europe as a whole. We all know from the last crash the Irish economy is more exposed to external shocks than many of our European neighbours so that is to be expected.
@Peter Hughes: Also even the most experienced economist have said they actually have no idea where economies will settle after this as its impossible to judge consumer demand and trends after a shock like this. If we were Sweden today our lockdown would have saved 34% extra deaths than we currently have. That’s real lives saved by today(570). Not hopeful economic savings in the future. As I said that’s why in my opinion I’d take the protection of life, with its clear advantages rather than the modest “predicted” economic savings.
@Peter Hughes: To be honest I don’t think we’re at a point for really reliable comparisons. It just surprises that over 500 deaths could be described as ‘not much in it’
@James F Davis: Do you realise how many additional people will die in a recession and if its a bad one well you can add way more on top I can tell you over years it will be multiples of what the virus kills, now come back to me and think about that before you post such comments. There is a big picture here and its about time people start looking at it.
@Peter Hughes: At this point in time I have no idea how the impending recession will look. I’ve never lived through a pandemic induced recession. And given the uncertainty among economists I think it’s fair to say that nobody really knows. That why it surprises me that you comment with such certainty on the topic. And if you are so sure then you must be making some kind of an estimate of the death toll. I asked you above what this estimate is and how you arrived at it?
@Joe Vlogs: what has that got to do with anything we are talking about at the minute.
If u want to discuss chinese politics with me grand we will in a different forum.
There was no user manual for this, no previous experience of anything on its scale to learn from and no real plans anywhere to cope with an event like it. EVERY government made mistakes and most will make more mistakes, but I doubt that any government set out to increase the risk to its people. The hope is that we will all learn and be prepared in the event that something like this happens again.
@Stephen Byrne: all they had to do was look at Hong Kong. 4 deaths in total…
I posted three months back that Ireland was not prepared and should reach out to the HK consulate…
Question is will us and their Nordic neighbours eventually see the same numbers? As has always been told to us we are simply slowing the spread. If what Ireland has done has helped our older and vunerable population avoid this for a while longer than this is positive, but failed catastrophically with the nursing and residential care homes.
@Sharp Elsi Mate: That’s a good question. I think what the lockdowns have done is give a clearer picture of the at risk categories whilst keeping the death toll down. Except of course with the residential settings which were badly managed. With the knowledge we have now it should help to minimise the death toll going forward.
@Sharp Elsi Mate: Very good point, we must also add the future unnecessary deaths that will come from not testing for cervical smears and breast checks etc.
Unfortunately we may also see an increase in suicides similar to the 2008 crash.
We have hidden from the virus, they faced it. We have little immunity they have much more.
Only an antibody test for everyone in the audience will tell the real story.
Where are 80 k deaths forecast by the famous imperial collage model by June 1st in Sweden? this had us build field hostipals and take over the private sector healthcare for the surge that never came here, nor did it in Sweden they have a marginally higher death rate per million. The difference is the GDP in Sweden is expected to have a one third contraction compared to ours. Just wait for the public sector cuts and the austerity and then let’s see who was right.
@Ruairi O Gorman: I don’t know where ‘here’ is to you, but Ireland has been through a surge of infection, illness, and deaths. Maybe not enough people died to suit your preference?
@Ruairi O Gorman: For those who insist on forcing this comparison the difference is almost 32%. Whatever way this plays out, I wouldn’t call that marginal.
You mentioned recently that there was strong evidence that the virus has already passed through the population. What’s the strong evidence?
@Ruairi O Gorman: 20/20 hindsight is a great thing. When this kicked off no-one knew how it would pan out, so many countries were over-cautious in their preparation, ourselves included in *some* areas. It’s easier to say now what was too much and what wasn’t enough.
@Ruairi O Gorman: Sweden GDP is expected to contract by between 6.5-9.7% according to their central bank. Ours by 8%.
@Ruairi O Gorman: How can you say that 570 people dying is a marginal figure especially as Sweden are still recording an excessive amount of new cases and deaths per day? Today they had 2214 new cases and 74 new deaths. Give it another month and then see if you still think their death rate is marginally greater than ours.
@Steve: another month and Sweden have close to full immunity and approx 5500-6000 deaths, we have no clear path and could be importing clusters for a yr or more
@dowthebow: They won’t have full immunity in a month or two, less than 9% of the population currently have antibodies in Sweden. Their herd immunity strategy is not working. The way their death rate is going they will have 10k deaths by the end of the summer and nowhere near herd immunity.
@Crispy Brown: or perhaps the Americans who were funding the Coronavirus research in the lab in Wuhan, because they couldn’t do it on US soil. O the tangled webs they weave…
@Juniper: I think I just got pink eye from reading your shite…
@Séamus Heffernan: *doing that Wolf of Wall Street clap thing while secretly raging that I didn’t post this*. Lol
@Greg Ward: Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. We could all do with a bit of a laugh these days!
Just an FYI we have more cases of Covid per head of population than Sweden
@european liberal: it’s the comparison of the quantity of tests carried out in Ireland and Sweden that is relevant
@Angela O’Riordan: yes, we have a testing rate per 1m population of 70000 whereas Sweden are roughly a 3rd at 27000.
@european liberal: no we dont u muppet.. Sweden has tested 27,000 per million, we tested 70,000 per million. More tests, more positive results. Also Stockholms major was interviewed on bbc news, clip available on bbc web site., saying he recons that total cases is 4 times higher than reported total. So stop talking out of your $#@.
@european liberal: Sweden has 450 deaths / million. Ireland has 336.
@european liberal: Sweden has the highest death rate per capita in the world (for countries with a population >500,000). They had 4500 deaths, if we had the same population as Sweden, we would have had over 8500 deaths.
@european liberal: also they’re death rate is much higher at 450, as ours is 336 per m.
@european liberal: We have fewer deaths per million population than Sweden. That is what the lockdown does in spreading the curve. The outcome is that while you might have the same numbers ultimately becoming sick, there will be fewer deaths as there is easier access to health resources
@David Jordan: Incorrect! Belgium 822; Spain 580, UK 580; Italy 555 followed by Sweden on 450 who are followed by France on 443; Holland 349 and Ireland 336. This makes Belgium the highest, Sweden fifth and Ireland eighth – which is where we have been for quite some time now.
@David Jordan: Sweden has a bit over twice our population, how would doubling our population increase our fatalities five fold?
Lockdown hawks are reacting with ill-concealed glee to this story. They wanted Sweden to fail.
@Richard Barrett: and Sweden failed.
@Karl Mc Cauley: It depends on how you measure failure. They probably didn’t cancel outpatient clinics, they probably won’t have high unemployment or austerity. And like someone mentioned earlier, over a longer period of time, who’s to say the death rate won’t be the same or less than other countries, it just happened to them quicker.
@Thunder Snowman: Yup thats what i was getting at.
@Richard Barrett: That’s just a silly contention. Sweden should be compared with its fellow Nordic countries. Now that is a stark contrast.
@Crispy Brown:
Given their behaviour in Hong Kong lately, as well as abominable action against the Uighurs and much more besides, I wouldn’t hold my breath
You had one job, Anders…
Bit late now to have a rethink
@Gordon Comstock: Sweden has a “soft lockdown”, bars, restaurants, retail shops and primary schools are still open. They limited the size of gathering to no more then 50 (reduced from 500). They recommended people not to travel between regions, most people work from home. But it is no where as strict as here and life is pretty much normal.
This explains Sweden soft lockdown: https://youtu.be/Sjez2JwVviI
Seems to me your lockdown kings are not reading the article, what it says is in sweeden some are wondering if they could have done better, not that they wished they had shut down the economy, we all should ask could we do better, especially here. Norway for instance thinks they should have been more like sweeden:
ht tps://w ww.google.com/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/30/coronavirus-norway-wonders-should-have-like-sweden/amp/
Sweden has had 438 deaths
Ireland 341 per million, not that much worse than us,
ht tps://w ww.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
and they wont have 30billion in debt to pass on to the next generation. Ask lockdown lovers, what has this pandemic cost you?, or are you on a Gov’t cheque or big business support.
@Henry Thompson: using your figures tell that to the 97 families per million that had to bury loved ones.
@Henry Thompson: You get my vote for stupid comment of the week. I don’t know how anyone can just trivialise 100 deaths like you did there.
@Henry Thompson: lockdown kings guided by the scientific method which overrules everything including witchcraft ,faith ,ballsology with oils etc
While Sweden scoffed at others drinking in pubs and lauding their attitude ,we cleverly abided by best scientific practice and did as well as we possibly could to date despite the tragic deaths .
Sweden has not tested the public and keep their numbers down by this affect.
Thankfully, I don’t live there anymore and I much appreciate Ireland’s approach. I know many Swedes and others living there having had the virus and been refused testing. Only told to behave morally .
Then told if they show no symptoms for a couple of days they can return to work.
It is scary and a disgrace in my opinion.
I worked in Denmark twice.
The Danes and Norwegians are great buddies, even speak the same language with different dialects, Share a common Viking History.
Stood up to Nazi Germany on WW2, but they detest the Swedes, always told me the Swedes are basically up their own Arses, they are them as uncaring and aloof.
Their approach to Covid 19 see.s to back up their analysis of Swedes , Eugenics style, as opposed to Kommune style of Norway and Denmark.
The Swedish chef would have done a better job.
There is one hugely important and disastrous mistake this ‘chief’ is omitting to tell International media: The essential outbreak in Europe (late Feb-early March) coincided with Swedish schools going on Mid-term Winter sports break, which is when 10′s of thousands of Swedes go skiing in the Alps, e.g. northern Italy and Austria – Europe’s worst Corona affected areas at that time.
The one-week break is staggered in three phases across the country’s regions, from the south to the north, and even though Italy’s plight was World news by the time Central Sweden went on their break, the authorities did NOTHING to stop them (or those in the North who had yet to go on their break) from traveling to those heavily infected areas, or quarantining -or even testing- those returning!!
This is the sloppy-ass root cause of the high numbers of infected, and dead, in Sweden!!
@Juniper: Source, please.
@A2 Poster: he might be thinking about this
Criminal negligence…
Stating facts on this site comes up as toxic as adjudged by some ridiculous algorithm.
The Swedes currently have the highest daily death rate of all the western countries. They have failed are still failing. They have had over 4 months to put their house in order. The general consensus in Sweden for the very high death rate (currently 5th in the world, and rising faster than all) is that it is caused by their foreign immigrants and not by Swedes themselves, their slack response or their disregard for vulnerable people and the elderly. It’s not just the government either, the general population is complicit.
Don’t give me that about waiting a couple of years to see how everyone does. The Swedes have undertaken a policy of ‘kill them all now’ and are not ashamed of it. Infact they seem pretty proud of it.
Let’s not get carried away with the , “one life is one too many “crap . We all die .this virus kills the old and infirm. The numbers out of Sweden are , in my opinion, very reasonable. They have 4.5 k v our 1.7 k . Pro rata with the population an extra 1 k costing us €20 billion. That’s a poor return.
What they’re saying in Sweden is , not that their system is wrong, but , that more could have been done to protect the vulnerable.
Use precise geolocation data. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Store and/or access information on a device. Personalised advertising and content, advertising and content measurement, audience research and services development.
These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work.
These cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then these services may not function properly.
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not be able to monitor our performance.
Cookies, device or similar online identifiers (e.g. login-based identifiers, randomly assigned identifiers, network based identifiers) together with other information (e.g. browser type and information, language, screen size, supported technologies etc.) can be stored or read on your device to recognise it each time it connects to an app or to a website, for one or several of the purposes presented here.
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times an ad is presented to you).
Information about your activity on this service (such as forms you submit, content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (for example, information from your previous activity on this service and other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (that might include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present advertising that appears more relevant based on your possible interests by this and other entities.
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on your advertising profiles, which can reflect your activity on this service or other websites or apps (like the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects.
Information about your activity on this service (for instance, forms you submit, non-advertising content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (such as your previous activity on this service or other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (which might for example include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present content that appears more relevant based on your possible interests, such as by adapting the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find content that matches your interests.
Content presented to you on this service can be based on your content personalisation profiles, which can reflect your activity on this or other services (for instance, the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects. This can for example be used to adapt the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find (non-advertising) content that matches your interests.
Information regarding which advertising is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine how well an advert has worked for you or other users and whether the goals of the advertising were reached. For instance, whether you saw an ad, whether you clicked on it, whether it led you to buy a product or visit a website, etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of advertising campaigns.
Information regarding which content is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine whether the (non-advertising) content e.g. reached its intended audience and matched your interests. For instance, whether you read an article, watch a video, listen to a podcast or look at a product description, how long you spent on this service and the web pages you visit etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of (non-advertising) content that is shown to you.
Reports can be generated based on the combination of data sets (like user profiles, statistics, market research, analytics data) regarding your interactions and those of other users with advertising or (non-advertising) content to identify common characteristics (for instance, to determine which target audiences are more receptive to an ad campaign or to certain contents).
Information about your activity on this service, such as your interaction with ads or content, can be very helpful to improve products and services and to build new products and services based on user interactions, the type of audience, etc. This specific purpose does not include the development or improvement of user profiles and identifiers.
Content presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type, or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times a video or an article is presented to you).
With your acceptance, your precise location (within a radius of less than 500 metres) may be used in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
With your acceptance, certain characteristics specific to your device might be requested and used to distinguish it from other devices (such as the installed fonts or plugins, the resolution of your screen) in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
Your data can be used to monitor for and prevent unusual and possibly fraudulent activity (for example, regarding advertising, ad clicks by bots), and ensure systems and processes work properly and securely. It can also be used to correct any problems you, the publisher or the advertiser may encounter in the delivery of content and ads and in your interaction with them.
Certain information (like an IP address or device capabilities) is used to ensure the technical compatibility of the content or advertising, and to facilitate the transmission of the content or ad to your device.
Information about your activity on this service may be matched and combined with other information relating to you and originating from various sources (for instance your activity on a separate online service, your use of a loyalty card in-store, or your answers to a survey), in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
In support of the purposes explained in this notice, your device might be considered as likely linked to other devices that belong to you or your household (for instance because you are logged in to the same service on both your phone and your computer, or because you may use the same Internet connection on both devices).
Your device might be distinguished from other devices based on information it automatically sends when accessing the Internet (for instance, the IP address of your Internet connection or the type of browser you are using) in support of the purposes exposed in this notice.
The choices you make regarding the purposes and entities listed in this notice are saved and made available to those entities in the form of digital signals (such as a string of characters). This is necessary in order to enable both this service and those entities to respect such choices.
have your say