Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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I committed to carrying out the history review towards the end of last year on the basis that there was a big conversation about it. I was meeting people on the street who randomly approached me to talk about history. They were not just history teachers, history fanatics or people who would have studied history. There has been a big change in the way we look at history in the last four to five years. I believe 2016 contributed to that. There is a yearning to find out more about our past. That is the motivation I had for the history review. It will only be a history review. There have been recent representations on geography and there were representations on home economics a couple of months ago.

I want to give the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment the space and time to arrive at conclusions and recommendations in the history review. There are many short courses, such as philosophy and so forth. We are now considering Lithuanian on the junior certificate course as well, so there is a broad spectrum. However, I take the Deputy's point about the importance of the geographical challenges and the environmental area.