Mr. Neil Johnson:

I will respond to that question. At the outset, the Deputy referenced the Christian Eriksen incident. One of the things that we hope will come from the media attention around that incident is the distinction between cardiac arrest and heart attack. They are quite different. I do not have a full report on what happened to Christian Eriksen, but it would seem that he suffered a cardiac arrest, which, in layman's terms, is an electrical malfunction as opposed to underlying cardiovascular disease and a heart attack.

In response to the Deputy's question, in the case of cardiac arrest, as the IHF has indicated, first and foremost, CPR is needed. Good CPR saves lives. That is the bottom line. It is not a great burden on anybody to learn. There is no obligation, moral or legal, on anyone to use it if they happen to witness a cardiac arrest. The simple maths are that the more people know how to administer CPR, the better.

The foundation is doing great work in training secondary school children through its own resources. Why can we not make it obligatory, as part of the second-level curriculum, that everybody, before they leave secondary school, undertakes a basic course in CPR? I would even go one step further and assert that those who continue to vocational training or third-level education should also be required to complete a top-up or refresher course before they complete their training or studies. In some countries, it is obligatory to be CPR certified before getting a driver's licence. I do not suggest that we place a large burden on the population, but the reality is that CPR saves lives. I am not just talking about cardiac arrest, because part of CPR training also teaches participants how to respond in cases of choking. I strongly suggest that perhaps the Minister for Education considers this making it an obligatory part of second-level education. It could be introduced, for instance, under a CSPE programme or another element. It takes no more than two or three hours to learn CPR.