Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat, a Theachta, as an gceist sin a chur. As the Deputy rightly mentioned, there is a commitment in the programme for Government to expand opportunities for pupils and students to attend Gaelscoileanna and Gaelcholáistí. I intend to prioritise the publication of a new policy on Irish-medium education outside of the Gaeltacht. The policy, together with an action plan, is currently being developed and I intend to bring it to Government for approval in the coming months. This has come about following a significant amount of stakeholder engagement and I have asked my officials to examine how we can create more opportunities for children and young people to receive their education through the medium of Irish. Engagement and collaboration with the Irish-medium education sector will be key to progressing this. Under this policy, we will work with key stakeholders to examine opportunities and support more children to receive their education as Gaeilge.

By way of information, over the past five years the amount of capital investment in Irish-medium schools is €405 million, which is significant. Of course, we all want to see more. I also intend to launch a survey of primary school communities in the coming months. We have been working through the survey and hope to announce it shortly. This survey will ensure that we have a better picture. It is important to get a picture of the needs, what it is that parents and students want, so we can plan for the future. It is planned that the survey will ask parents for their preference for the primary language of educational provision in their school, whether it is to be provided as Béarla or as Gaeilge. The results of the survey will help us to plan how we will provide education at primary level into the future. This initiative, along with other work, will help to identify the opportunities for increasing Irish-medium provision at primary and post-primary level.

This is all about ensuring that parents have a choice. If parents want to send their children to a school that is English-speaking or Irish-speaking, we want them to have that choice within their communities and in the vicinity of where they live. For that to happen, we need to have a clear picture and the survey will, therefore, be very important. A considerable amount of stakeholder engagement has happened to date and that will feed into the policy. That will be important to our ability to plan and project.

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