Feargal Quinn (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted the Minister for Education and Skills is coming to the House shortly. What Senator Eamonn Coghlan and others have spoken about today is important, namely, continuous assessment. There has been a problem in the past with continuous assessment. It has not been welcomed by teachers themselves. They have difficulty with assessing their own pupils. It would be a shame not to have continuous assessment and to have examinations on a more regular basis by someone outside the school. I am not sure why teachers in the past have not been enthusiastic. I hope they will change their attitude because one of the important elements of continuous assessment is being assessed by one?s own teachers. In the past, teachers have not shown enthusiasm for such an approach. I hope we get a chance to broach the subject next week. I would prefer continuous assessment to having the assessment done as if it were a number of junior certificates, on a more regular basis.

The Minister for Education and Skills will also speak this afternoon about adding to the curriculum the teaching of Mandarin, or Chinese, and entrepreneurship, which will be very useful. A man in County Kerry, Jerry Kenneally, sold his business but decided he wished to remain in Kerry and invest in entrepreneurship for young people. He is doing so with 15 year olds and 16 year olds in transition year. Each year he puts money into training teachers how to teach entrepreneurship in the county - this is being done only in Kerry. Last year I had the opportunity to go down with a number of pupils from Drogheda to see what was happening there. This is one man getting behind his county and saying, "We are going to teach people who are 15 and 16 years of age how to be entrepreneurs". It was so exciting to go down and see how successful that has been. I mention this because although we may expect the Department of Education and Skills to do everything sometimes it is better for us to do it ourselves, with the support of the Department. I would love to think we could manage to do something in that area. When I went to County Kerry I could not get over the enthusiasm of some 600 pupils who came to Tralee and met other entrepreneurs, many of whom were in their teens and had set up successful businesses. I would love to think other counties could do the same. I know Jerry Kenneally would love to see this happening in every one of the other 31 counties in Ireland and I hope this will take place.

The other day I read that legislation has been passed in Portugal to the effect that all large stores - I do not remember the size specified - which employ a certain number of people must have defibrillators on site. This seems to be a very useful provision and it would be well worthwhile if companies in Ireland that employ a certain number of people or which take in a certain number of visitors, as stores do, were also to do the same. This seems to be something we in this House could grab hold of and encourage the Minister for Health to undertake. Considering the problems the Minister has, it would be a real coup if he could manage to have a look at what is happening in Portugal and install something similar in this country.