Ms Aoife Rush:

Our consultation process for this involved a number of school visits. In this context, it was eight school visits. We invited submissions and we had a stakeholder event and an online survey as well. We do endeavour to engage with the public.

I would like to add, again, that there is no intention in this subject or any subject whatsoever to put a spotlight on agriculture in any negative way. We absolutely appreciate that agriculture is such an important part of our economy but also culturally, socially and environmentally in a range of different aspects.

The one thing we would say about the new curriculum in particular, which is the climate action and sustainable development at senior cycle, is that we endeavour that students look at it from the perspective of their local community. In that context, we feel this specification would enable students to engage in their local community, be it the agricultural community, urban, rural or whatever. I second my colleague that in no way is there any intention that agriculture should in any way be seen in a negative light.

With regard to other subjects that would also have a focus on agriculture, we are working on redeveloping all subjects across senior cycle, including agricultural science, which will be redeveloped, and hopefully the updated agricultural science specification will be introduced in 2027. We need to be aware of the context here in that climate action and sustainable development, as a subject, is one subject across a suite of subjects where we are endeavouring to address the issues of education for sustainable development across the broader subjects as well.