Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Gabhaim buíochas leis na finnéithe as teacht os comhair an choiste. This is only my second week as a member of the committee. I am still learning and am looking forward to learning more. However, my questions will not be the most detailed or specific at this point.

I found all the opening statements extremely interesting. As I looked through them, it caught my eye that an issue referred to in them is one that came up in our meeting last week, namely, the whole issue of gender. Last week, all the witnesses were women and we have a good, strong team of women here again today, which I am pleased to see. We have talked about the concept of promoting women and girls going into STEM and how important that is from the perspective of early education, primary level and secondary level. I was struck by the reference to how STEM is being brought into primary schools with an emphasis on pupils being mathematical and being digital learners.

I am interested in hearing where our guests see that divergence taking place. In primary school, where everybody is in the one class, I would imagine it would not be quite so clear that STEM in general is seen in a gendered way. Thus, my question is where do our guests see that change. Does it happen in secondary school when the subject choices are picked?

To give my background, I always had an interest in maths and wanted to do economics for the leaving certificate, but I was told it would be too difficult. I ended up doing home economics, which I am dreadful at. Then I wanted to do finance, maths and economics at third level, but I was told oh no, such-and-such did it and dropped out and it would be too difficult. I ended up doing economics and then doing a master's in finance, but my point is it was not until last week and this week that I actually thought about the impact those things had on me, even though I am more into mathematical things than other areas like literature and so on. Any of our guests may answer on where they believe the change happens and where we need to place the focus accordingly.