Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Bhuel, tá cúpla focal agam i Sínis - huān yíng - welcome.

My question is on the need for the Minister for Education and Skills to outline his plans for the provision of suitably qualified teachers to implement a national roll-out of Chinese language and culture, Mandarin, as a short course from September 2014. I am delighted to have the Minister in the House but I regret the Minister for Education and Skills is not present because this issue has been his baby, so to speak, for quite some time. As a nation we still do not have a clue where he will get the teachers to implement Chinese across the country in all second level schools from September 2014.

I am very aware of many of the developments in this area as I am quite involved in it. I have 21 schools in Galway teaching Chinese language and culture. In an initiative I started I have two young native Chinese teachers who spent three days, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, in Galway with 21 schools. They are in 21 classes, both primary and second level. The excitement is huge among the students. I have visited some of them in their classrooms. Their methodologies are excellent. I get the teachers' services for free from Confucius Institute in Cork. Working with the 21 schools in Galway city and county I have five clusters, one in Tuam, one in south Galway, one in Oranmore, one in Galway city and one in Athenry. Each of the schools make a small contribution which covers the teachers' accommodation, food and travel.

This is a local initiative. The hype is amazing, and many more schools are looking to have these services. We did this deliberately because we know we have to look to the world, and not just Europe or America, in terms of the future of our young people. The Taoiseach has been to China. Xi Jinping has been to Ireland. If we are to do business with China the language, not just the culture, must be understood. This is about the roll out of the Chinese language and culture programme from September 2014 in our schools.

I have been involved with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment which is developing the short course. I am in consultation with the people working on that. I know from speaking to people in some of our education centres, and I spoke with Galway education centre today, that there have not been any instructions yet about how the roll-out will be achieved. I know from speaking to some of the people developing the programme that they do not know how the roll-out will be achieved.

I ask the Minister to indicate from where we will get the teachers to achieve a national roll-out? Will we have a model whereby native Chinese teachers will work with out own teachers? We have only a few Irish national teachers learning Chinese. There is great interest in the media in this short course. There is great hype. We are getting great kudos for it but let it not be a disaster and therefore we need to be ready. That is the reason I raise the issue with the Minister. I look forward to his answer.