Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

This is a valuable opportunity to dig down into this issue. One of the phrases used by Mr. Moynes was "visa factories". That is one of the very serious and genuine concerns people have. We know that a lot of students were left high and dry by some of these providers winding up at very short notice. While it is a great financial loss to Italian or Spanish students who are coming here to learn English, there are serious consequences for people who have travelled from Brazil and have been left high and dry, with all the consequent implications in terms of visa and their right to be in this country.

TEFL, as it was called back then, was actually my first job in education.

I did it here in Dublin, Waterford, Italy and Glasgow, strangely enough; there was a difference in pronunciation. I used to be terribly shocked when I heard poor young Italians repeating phrases back to me with the broadest, flattest Waterford accent I have ever heard. I did them a great injustice, I am sure. When I first walked into a TEFL classroom, I had 40 hours of training behind me. There is no doubt that it is a bit of a wild west. I subsequently went to 70 and 110 hours. What level of training qualification is now needed to walk into a classroom? I had a primary degree but it was just a one-week, 40-hour course, three, two, one - off you go. I would not want to speak to the quality of education I was putting across in my first couple of years doing it.

Another issue I would like the witnesses to address is regulation. I am a qualified primary school teacher. I maintained my registration through the Teaching Council. I pay my yearly registration fee. I also have Garda vetting. It has ensured that all my qualifications are kept up to date and of a sufficient standard. Is there anything like that to make sure the teacher who stands at the head of a classroom has that level of qualification? There is huge pressure on this system because we are the only English-speaking member of the European Union. That has been a huge change and additional pressure in recent years.

Another issue is around work. It does not apply to an EU student; if they arrive here, they can work their lights out. There is freedom of movement but a Brazilian student, for example, has a restriction on the number of hours they are legally allowed to work. In practice, which is an open secret, there are riders working through platforms, be it Deliveroo or whatever other company, who share licences on those platforms. The effect is that we cannot see who is actually working and doing the deliveries. I refer to a visible sector of the economy because we can all see them on bicycles cycling around. We know that a lot of the kids who turn up here, nominally on an education visa to learn English, end up working in the black economy. When we lose sight of them entirely, there is a very vulnerable student who may have poor language skills and knows that a condition of their remaining in this country is to keep quiet about whatever work they do. It is predominantly kids and young people. Are we making sure that the kids who arrive here for English language learning or to do a bit of work on the side and send a bit of money back home are adequately protected in the economy? My questions are about the quality of teaching and learning and how we regulate that and how we make sure we protect some very vulnerable people who arrive on our shores.