Dr. Orla McDonagh:

I want to follow up on the literacy issue. We need to be careful that we do not have a narrow definition of literacy. I am a classical concert pianist but I have a trad flute at home. If I grew up in Ireland and did not know about the traditions of my traditional music, I would consider myself illiterate. It is very interesting if one looks back at the old school music books from the 1950s and 1960s in this country. People were well able to read and sing by ear. Aural training is huge in all music training. We often consider Third World country immigrants in our country as people we are giving a hand up to. I have talked to a number of different primary school teachers who discover that these children are far more literate in music than our own Irish students. We need to be very careful about our definitions of literacy because it goes beyond what is printed on the page. The last thing I was asked about was who would make the legislation. We would need to have representatives of all the traditions and levels. If we are not going to do this in a vacuum we need to compare it with what is going on in the world beyond our island. We know what we do here but there is a perspective and things we can learn from other countries. As Mr. Keenan said, we can learn from Finland where there were extraordinary moves taken a number of decades ago that have totally changed its music output and the whole country's creative industry output. There are lessons to be learned outside of Ireland too.