Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the passing of the Bill and congratulate the Minister of State on getting his maiden Bill through the House. As always, his officials were helpful and completely on top of their game. The legislation is important. As the Minister said, we must make innovation more real. While we have spent enormous amounts of money and made enormous investments, we must translate it into jobs, into something that means something to people on the ground. Tomorrow, Deputy Eoghan Murphy will host a session on coding. I gather the Taoiseach did some coding last week, although listening to his responses to questions here recently, one would have to do a lot of coding to find the answer. He did some real coding. Coding is very important and needs to be brought into the primary school curriculum. The Minister of State's other Department is the Department of Education and Skills, and that is why his fit is so important, to make such changes happen. The groundwork for investment in innovation was made by my colleague, Deputy Martin both when he was Minister for Education and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. The foundation stones he put in place are the cause of where we are today. Unless we convert that investment into jobs, it will lose its reach and impact. This legislation is a small but important step in making it real.

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