The housing emergency is now spilling into education. Schools are really struggling to recruit teachers, teachers cannot afford the extortionate rents that are being charged and many are locked out of any real opportunity of ever purchasing their own home. I was shocked and gobsmacked to hear the Minister for Education's first response to this was a suggestion of cancelling career breaks for teachers, not least because she herself is on a career break from teaching. Clearly that is not the answer. Will the Taoiseach make clear to the Dáil that the cancellation of career breaks is not what is in mind? Furthermore, will he set out what the Government will do to address this real crisis in recruitment of teachers, which is wholly traceable to the housing crisis which has come on the Taoiseach's watch?

The Deputy is unfair and incorrect to say the first response of the Minister is around career breaks. It is not, and no decision has been made on that. A whole range of initiatives have been taken in respect of teacher supply. The limits on substitute work applying to teachers on career breaks have also been temporarily suspended. The Teaching Council made regulations allowing for the registration of third- and fourth-year undergraduate student teachers under a new registration route, route 5. So far, over 2,100 students have applied for that registration. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has agreed to a waiver of pension abatement for retired teachers returning to teach for up to 50 days in each of the three calendar years from 2021 to 2023, inclusive. The Department of Education has put in place a scheme for 2022-23 to allow post-primary teachers to teach in their subject area over the usual limit of 22 hours per week, up to a maximum of 20 additional hours per term. Free upskilling programmes are now available for registered teachers and so on, as well as additional posts.