Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Creative Ireland plan was launched with huge fanfare throughout the country. A specific and important pillar is to deliver arts in education throughout the country. I have asked the Minister on umpteen occasions to explain explicitly how she will implement arts in education in schools. A chapter is dedicated to lovely talk and language about how we aspire to having arts in education flourish in our schools. I would like to know three tangible actions that will be taken whereby we will see this implemented in our schools.

The Minister spoke about ongoing summer courses for teachers whereby artists come and work with them. This is fantastic, but what we really need are these artists going into schools. It is not enough to expect the teachers in the schools to take this on board. It is wonderful and fantastic, but there is an opportunity and we are not tapping into the skills set of the artists who are hungry to get into schools and deliver proper professional arts in education. I ask the Minister to tell me how it will be implemented.

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