Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would restore the arts as a core subject because we do not live in our heads; we live and work with our bodies. Dance is an example of that.

I was fascinated that all the Senators were quoting Tom Collins's newspaper article. He is a fine gentlemen. I think that he was the president of Maynooth where I did - I may be showing off in saying this - one of my degrees. It was a fine university that married the secular and the theological. When I was there it opened up to outside students, and I learned as much from the theological part as I did from the secular part . In the article Tom Collins quoted Pádraig Pearse's The Murder Machine. The article was a little extreme. When freedom is discussed one must talk about freedom for and freedom to and define their terms, which Tom Collins did not do. What he went on to say - it includes more of those aspirational verbs - was classic: "The single most important attribute a young person should have acquired at the end of the Junior Cycle is a love for learning". What people need to understand and learn by the end of their education is how to read and write and to have a love of both and how to speak and have a love of orality. With such skills a person can get into any university in the world.

I leave Senators with that thought. I want someone in the Department of Education and Skills to write a paper about the "how ". I invite them to write a treatise on that using aspirational, formulaic and inspirational verbs. It would make interesting reading.