Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)

-----and express the views and intentions of the European Council. Individual member states are invited to adopt the approaches set out in the conclusions in so far as is appropriate for their particular national priorities, circumstances and resources. My Department fully accepts the desirability of this approach as an EU policy direction. This does not mean, however, that it is necessarily practicable in every member state.

The modern language initiative was introduced to expand modern language teaching into a selected range of primary schools for fifth and sixth class pupils. It has grown from 270 participating schools when it began to 505 schools during the 2008-09 school year. In Ireland, where two national languages, Irish and English, are given recognition under the Constitution, both of these languages are taught at primary level.

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