Cecilia Keaveney (Fianna Fail)

I went to school when I was three and I left education at 27. I am a product of the education system of the 1970s and 1980s. I came out with a BMus, a PgC, an MPhil and an LTCL and then I landed here. There are many questions to be asked in that regard. I went through a good education system but I can point to the faults, some of which I will outline. Some things have not changed since I went to school, which is one of the core issues we need to address. Given the advances in technology, science and how people approach life, if the education system is the same now as when I was going through school, surely we all need to learn lessons.

It would be much easier for me to read off a tranche of statistics to prove we are doing more than we ever did before, but I do not wish to go down that route. Today's debate is not focused on one particular element of education, it is about education across the board. We need openness across the board. Too often within departmental structures there is no such thing as crossing over. When do we ever talk about primary and secondary education in the one breath, or do we ever talk about secondary education and universities in the same breath? God forbid that teacher trainers would ever see real live secondary schools other than during the six weeks of placement or whatever the system ordains. Those are the fundamentals with which we must engage. In the context of education we must begin at departmental policy level and work our way back down.

I had great fun when I was first elected to the Dáil. I spent weeks following Niamh Breathnach, then Minister for Education and Science, to ask parliamentary questions about remedial teachers. No matter what way I asked the questions there were statistics, damned lies and statistics, and they could be presented whatever way the Minister wanted. Fundamentally, the only extra support in a school was a remedial teacher. There may have been one teacher between five schools. Significant changes have been made in that regard. Senator Healy Eames suggested there was no link with homes but a home-school liaison programme is in place. Many extra resources are in place. The Minister announced the appointment of 50 extra psychologists and there is the National Council for Special Education — I will return to that issue. The intention is to integrate students and parents in the school experience not to have separate identities that are mutually exclusive.

I studied music through my entire educational career. I tortured the Minister of State, Deputy Devins, about music therapy and the role of music therapy as a therapeutic intervention for people with special educational needs. I believe that because I studied music I have the confidence to stand in this Chamber and talk to the House today. Music gave me an important range of skills to engage with people in a classroom situation and outside it in the broadest sense, yet when one mentions the arts in education it is frowned upon, laughed at and put to one side with the comment that we will do that another time when we can afford it. The Minister referred over and over to maths and how it was core. However, I challenge all the experts in the Department of Education and Science to look at the evidence in terms of those who study music who go on to become engineers and the research that has been done all over the world on how music is fundamental to rhythmic and co-ordination development and the whole development of the child, which is crucially important for reading and writing when children go to school.

I start at that point. That is one of my big gripes. While I understand that universities are important and that we need to develop fourth level education I wonder at a time of global financial and economic crisis when there is a call to stop and look forward, whether that should be the approach we take. I accept the argument about children who are currently in the system but if we are to examine education fundamentally — I accept there needs to be a major overhaul — surely we should not be looking at two or five years time but ten, 15 and 20 years time. We need to start with children up to the age of six.