Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I wish the Cathaoirleach and my fellow Senators a happy new year. I am pleased to join with Senator Ivana Bacik in marking how important it is for the Minister, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald, to be in Vietnam to renegotiate the bilateral agreement. The House will recall the long and arduous hours we spent in the last session debating the new Adoption Bill, now enacted, and also the 20 families whose files are in Vietnam and who are waiting for their babies. Progress was promised in the last session but it never happened. The Minister's visit is good news.

I join with Senator Susan O'Keeffe in regard to her fine words on the early and untimely passing of that fine journalist, Mary Raftery. Her work did so much for the advancement of children's rights and in many ways has led us to where we are today, on the brink of a referendum on that issue.

I ask the Leader to ask the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, to attend the House. The Minister today announced €3.75 million for an initiative on the teaching of science that will revolutionise how science is taught in this country and it is important he tells us more about this project. It is a lot of money in these times and, while I welcome it, I want to know whether this extends to the area of IT. We know many graduates who are not getting jobs in IT because they are not adequately skilled so it is an area where we are losing in the midst of an employment crisis.

Much emotion was expressed over the holiday period in regard to education. There were concerns about cuts to teacher numbers in small schools, on which we need clarification, and there was also a very emotive debate on career guidance. The career guidance counsellor in a school is a teacher, like any other teacher. Up to now, they were ex-quota or outside the teacher allocation but the Minister, Deputy Quinn, has now put them inside it. One might say that is not a bad thing. I condemn in the strongest terms the words of an eminent career guidance counsellor in this country, who is a former president of the career guidance counsellors' association, who stated that changes will cause suicide among young people. There is no causal link between the provision of career guidance and youth suicide. That is only inflaming the issue on something that is so sensitive and important. If anything, what we need is the module on suicide prevention that is in the SPHE in secondary schools-----