In recent years, there has been concern regarding the performance of Irish second level students in mathematics and in particular algebra. In response, the Irish Government have introduced ‘Project Maths’ which is a major reform of second level mathematics. It was introduced on a phased basis in 2008 and involves changes to what students learn, how they learn it and how it is assessed. One of the main changes is the promotion of a functions based approach to teaching algebra. This is much different from the transformational rule based approach which had dominated Irish classrooms. The new algebra strand and functions based approach was introduced in second level schools in September 2011. This paper aims to investigate the immediate effect, if any, of such an approach on student’s transformational algebraic ability. This will be done by analysing the mathematics diagnostic scores of incoming third level students at an Irish University.