Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Over the years, when schools were required to lead an initiative, relationships and sexuality education, RSE, being one, decisions would have been taken to get a cohort of teachers through a body of in-service and train them up. I am RSE trained and I did science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM, training at another time. When the Department rightly sees a considerable initiative that needs to be led, it often uses the in-house talent pool. There would be merit in looking at doing something such as that with teachers and offering them the opportunity to upskill in-house, especially those who graduate with educational psychology to teach at primary level. The psychology element of the degree is not used that often in the day-to-day school context. Maybe there is a way of building on what they have spent learning for four years in St. Patrick's College or Mary Immaculate College and augmenting and refining it in order that there can be an in-house capacity.

I will next ask about the physical education Ministry that the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, has taken up. I know he is not here and it is all under the patronage of the Department. I would love to see a strategy on physical literacy because, when I was teaching, if a child was struggling with literacy or numeracy, we would undergo diagnostic tests and make interventions straight away.

Even where a child was not diagnosed with dyscalculia or dyslexia, there still would be interventions to support that child and try to get him or her on the right track. The same has not been true for decades when it comes to physical literacy. Children's developmental milestones are benchmarked when they are very young by way of developmental checkups at their local GP practice before they enter the school system. It is only when there is a definitive diagnosis of dyspraxia that a proper intervention plan will be provided for a child. There are many other things to consider. The fundamental movements of catching, kicking, throwing, rolling and squatting are all important in sport but also in everyday life and they stand to people as they grow older. I would love to see the Minister and the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, lead an initiative on this to ensure there are safety nets for children with physical literacy needs. Those types of needs were not met in years gone by.