Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. When I went through details of foreign languages being offered in the education system, with particular reference to what I consider to be minority languages, I was surprised to learn that Mandarin Chinese does not feature on the school curriculum. To put the issue in context, in the junior certificate uptake last year, five schools provided Hebrew studies for 165 pupils, while Hebrew studies was provided in four schools for 104 pupils in the leaving certificate. Arabic is being provided by ten schools for ten pupils and in 2010 three schools provided ancient Greek for 20 pupils. While I do not have anything against the classics and I was fascinated by the number of pupils taking Hebrew studies at junior and leaving certificate levels, based on a number of comments made to me and research I have carried out and the growing cultural and trade links with China, it is self-evident that the Department should give consideration to offering Mandarin Chinese as a curriculum subject.

The most recent trade figures show that Ireland trebled its exports to China between March 2010 and March 2011. I understand that while the Chinese embassy website has an education section, the material supplied does not refer to learning Mandarin. I pay tribute to the UCD Confucius Institute for Ireland which has been actively developing and promoting the subject of Chinese and culture for post-primary schools with the result that in the academic year 2011-12 Chinese language and culture will be officially taught in Irish post-primary schools nationally, first as a transition year unit with the aim of expanding to become a full curricular subject.

I am grateful to the Oireachtas Library and Research Service for providing me with much background information, including a copy of an article which appeared in the Irish Independent. The piece was written by Dr. Liming Wang, co-author of the book, Doing Business in China: The Irish Experience. The article notes that China achieved GDP growth of 10.3% in 2010 in the middle of a world recession, has overtaken Germany as the world's largest exporter and is the second largest economy in the world after the United States. Already, 50 million people around the globe are learning Chinese, with schools showing an ever increasing interest in the subject. However, according to research published in the aforementioned book, lack of language competence and ignorance of Chinese culture inhibits trade synergies between the two sides.

Dr. Liming Wang notes that a national survey of post-primary schools conducted by the UCD Confucius Institute for Ireland found that Irish schools would like to have Mandarin on the curriculum. Thus far, a national syllabus has not been agreed and courses vary in nature according to the needs and objectives of each school. According to Dr. Liming Wang, the "absence of a formal Irish syllabus or examination course limits the recognition students can gain for their learning". He adds: "The growth of the Chinese economy and the enormous business potential to Ireland is far greater than that provided by countries such as France and Germany, whose languages are currently promoted by the post-primary Languages Initiative." Chinese, he wrote, is arguably "more important than even the current 'mainstream' languages of French and German". I add a caveat to the extent that Germany ranks among our largest three trading partners. Dr. Liming Wang believes the cost of not including Mandarin in an admittedly crowded curriculum would be much greater than the cost of not meeting this challenge and he notes that Mandarin is already a curriculum language in many countries, including the United Kingdom, where its popularity is steadily growing. I agree with his conclusion that if Ireland does not act quickly, it will be left behind.