Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I thank the Minister for his reply. He will be aware that when he was leader of the Labour Party and I was one of its spokespersons, our ambition was to have a computer at every desk for every child all the way up through the education system. We have now gone beyond that. Those who work in this area have often referred to the example of people learning how to drive cars. In this instance, we are discussing the engineering relating to cars and how cars are made. Clearly this is an industry which is extremely important to our country and which has great potential in economic terms.

I already referred to Google, the Irish headquarters of which is located in the Minister's constituency. I also referred to Mr. Eric Schmidt, who helped Larry Page and Sergey Brin launch that company, and the fact that he informed Britain - which has a lacuna similar to that which exists here in its school curriculum - that it invented the mathematics, and so on, relating to this technology but that it is now ignoring said technology and is not prepared to be innovative. I welcome the Minister's comment to the effect that he will raise this matter with the NCCA.

See this speech in context