Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

If the Minister agrees, I will be happy to speak to him privately afterwards about this issue. I have only been able to get the information from a number of ETBs. Obviously, I cannot get it from the voluntary secondary school sector or the primary school sector. Studies have shown that mobile phone use in school has a negative impact through cognitive overload, increased distraction and altered memory and learning patterns. We have seen adopted in some schools a digital only approach whereby there are no school textbooks. The problem in some of them is that there is poor implementation of the replacement, that is, notes. This is a huge issue in schools and the Department has not got to grips with it. Frankly, what happened last year was that the then Minister, Deputy Bruton, was looking for a headline for the newspapers during the teacher conferences and announced the circular. Once the circular was published the following month, that was the end of it and nothing more was heard from the Department. Some schools and ETBs literally threw the circular in the bin and the Department was not able to tell me this until I obtained the information. I question the seriousness of the Department on the issue. I also question its seriousness on the parent and student charter Bill which was announced as if it were law at the end of 2016. A teacher came up to me at the meeting in Ratoath last night and told me that it was law. It is not. I had to tell her that it was not even written. There is no use in announcing it again three years later. It needs to be implemented and introduced.

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