Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is with great enthusiasm and pride we celebrate Science Week. It is a time dedicated to recognising the invaluable contributions of science and technology to our society. It is important that we take this opportunity and use it as a platform to reflect on the significant progress we have made and the strides we still need to make to ensure a brighter, more innovative future for our country.

I will use my time to focus on a particular initiative that exemplifies the spirit of Science Week and the increasingly positive culture of innovative science that is permeating our education system, namely, the Longford Microsoft Dream Space Showcase that took place in Edgeworthstown earlier in the year. It was significant that it took place in Edgeworthstown, home to the Edgeworth family, who were pioneers of education and science in Ireland. It was a day of inspiration, with 300 young primary school children from 11 schools across the county coming together to showcase their science projects and what they were able to do with microchips and a whole surge of creative energy.

We meed to acknowledge funding from Creative Ireland and the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and the significant role played by Longford County Council in this initiative. I was interested to hear the previous speaker and Deputy Gannon say that we sometimes marginalise art at the expense of science, so it is important this project very much showcased what we now refer to as STEAM, or science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. For far too long, students who were creative felt they could not go down the science route because they did not have the core skills to do that, but this project brought young pupils together in a collaborative effort, so people who were strong on art and people who were strong on the science were able to work together. It was a really inspiring project.

It was a national project that began in January. Longford County Council was selected to run it. The council's IT department is headed up by a top-class guy named Danny Lynch, and he, Christine Collins and a number of key people on the staff drove this project. There was great collaboration with the library service and also the arts team headed up by Shane Crossan. It was a real collective, collaborative effort. It involved giving out small computers called micro:bits to the 11 schools that participated. Students were given a crash course in how to work these, were sent away and then came back with their ideas and showcased them over the course of a Friday in the centre in Edgeworthstown. It was our mini Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition and it was fantastic to see the energy in that room. We must acknowledge the role played by Creative Ireland and the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, but also the county council, which really drove this project. Were it not for its support I do not think the report would have happened. It is a new era when we see an IT department from a local authority heading up a project like this. It shows how the whole culture and ethos within our local authorities is changing as well, in that it is so much centred on education and the value of education.

This is not an isolated project; it is going to become an annual event. It is really testimony to the success of this initiative that it is also going to be the platform to enable Longford, we hope, to become the first county where all secondary schools will offer computer science as a leaving certificate subject. That is significant. It is an ambitious project supported, as I said, by the council but also a number of key employers, most notably Microsoft, but also Ericsson, which is based in Athlone, were really support of the initiative. I wish to single out Sinéad Pillion, who is the senior programmer at Ericsson and a native of Longford. She was really ambitious about this project, primarily because Ericsson noticed a small number of graduates per capitawere coming through from the county to the company and it wanted to improve on that. The company said it would work with the council and the upshot is this very exciting initiative.

Three local schools, namely, Scoil Mhuire, Longford, Ballymahon Vocational School and Templemicheal College, Longford, are at the forefront of this initiative. Computer science is already being taught to fifth-year students in preparation for their leaving certificate ,and 21 sixth-year students of Scoil Mhuire are set to become the first class in County Longford to complete the leaving certificate compute science syllabus this year. I offer my sincere congratulations to the schools taking part and their teachers for leading the way in this groundbreaking endeavour. Industry support has been critical to the success of the project. The collaboration with Microsoft and Ericsson highlights the importance of partnerships between education and industry in shaping the technological landscape of our region. On this point I acknowledge the efforts of our local employers, most notably Abbott, Avery Dennison and Technimark, which, through lifetime learning, are encouraging their staff to constantly upskill, especially in the area of science. That is very important as well.

We must also acknowledge the work of Midlands Science. Thanks to Deputy Denis Naughten, it gave us a briefing in the audiovisual room in recent weeks and it was very informative. It is running an event in Ballymahon on Friday as part of Science Week and the young children there are really looking forward to that. Again, this shows how science goes outside the laboratory. The children will be looking at local wildlife past and present. It is making science real and tangible for young people, which is extremely important. We must acknowledge the value of science; it needs to be front and centre and a core part of education now and into the future. At all times, we need to use every opportunity we get to champion youth in the support and pursuit of knowledge and innovation.

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