Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise sincerely to all of the delegates. I was subject to the vagaries of Iarnród Éireann's timetable in getting here from Athenry and missed the presentations. I am very sorry that I missed them because it would have been fascinating to hear what they had to say. Many of them have been deeply involved for decades in the exploration of the use of ICT in primary schools. I fundamentally believe once in every generation there is an opportunity for a country to respond in a meaningful and effective way to meeting the needs of its young people. That is how serious this issue is, which is why I am so apologetic for not being here for the presentations.

When Donogh O'Malley announced the introduction of post-primary education for a generation of Irish people many years ago, he employed incredible vision and courage. We are now seeing its impact where multinational companies approach Ireland primarily because of our hugely talented and highly skilled young people. We are right back at that place and will either make a fundamental decision to make a very significant investment in the use of ICT in schools or fall behind significantly in the next five years.

At an event last year held in Dublin Castle Lord Puttnam, the digital champion for Ireland, who is doing extraordinary work on our behalf in advancing the digital agenda, said it would be three to four years at a maximum before other countries, particularly in South-East Asia and the emerging economies in Africa, would leapfrog Ireland in the use of ICT in schools. Essentially, they are jumping from a 19th century to a 21st century school system. They are looking at best practice internationally in the use of ICT in education.

In Irish schools we have incredibly talented, committed and passionate teachers who are already doing a lot of what the delegates have set out in this strategy; they have been doing it for the past 40 years. The Computers in Education Society of Ireland, CESI, has been in existence for over 40 years. It involves teachers who, long before any of the rest of us saw the value of using technology in an innovative way in the classroom, saw an opportunity and employed incredible vision. Mr. O'Leary has been deeply involved in this process also for many years. We now have children teaching one another the skills they need to function effectively in a modern 21st century environment. Last Saturday we saw the culmination of a national online mathematics competition, MATHletes, using the Khan Academy platform. Some 13,000 Irish children at both primary and post-primary level took the time, with their teachers and parents, to enter the competition and learn mathematics in an exciting new way. What was really ground-breaking in this endeavour was the amount of work the children did outside school time. They were on the Khan Academy platform late into the evening, at the weekend and during the Easter break when one would have expected most children to throw their schoolbag in a corner and not engage in any educational activity. Some of them were online for up to 30 or 40 hours during the Easter break.

There is something interesting and exciting happening in ICT education in Ireland. There is a deep yearning on the part of teachers and young people to make a leap forward in how they use ICT in education. There is no denying that it will require a significant investment, courage and vision on someone's part to make that leap now. This time next year the strategy will be published and it will need to be a call to action. It will need to employ the same vision employed by Donogh O'Malley all those years ago. It will need to set out a challenge for us all. Everybody involved in education and who will be in government next year needs to realise that we are at a significant crossroads in education and that unless we take the right route, we will deny children the opportunity of a lifetime to excel, create and be major players in the shaping of the world for many years to come.