Geraldine Feeney (Fianna Fail)

I congratulate all those involved in having Irish recognised as an official EU language. In the past two weeks, my daughter has been sitting her leaving certificate examinations and I read with interest the opinions of people on the examination papers that she sat. I was amazed to read about the Irish paper and the problems that Irish poses for students. We have more students in this country taking higher level French than are taking higher level Irish, even though they have been taught Irish since the beginning of primary school. It is now causing such a problem for students that they are being exempt from it. It is up to the school to deem whether the student should be exempt from Irish.

Can we make time in the autumn to look at the area of teaching Irish? There is obviously a problem with it when more children are taking higher level French than Irish, even though they are only exposed to French from the age of 13. Irish is a requirement to gain entry to universities. If we do not have this debate now, the day will come when Irish language and culture will become as rare and as under used as Greek and Latin.