James Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the news we will have coding classes in primary schools. It is a very progressive. There is also a proposal in the programme for Government for an ICT course to be on the leaving certificate curriculum. Plans are afoot to develop a coding curriculum and I call for this to be expedited. Already St. Joseph's secondary school in Rush has a coding class. Although it is not on any curriculum, more than 30 children, mainly girls, have taken it up. There is huge appetite and interest in it and I ask that it be expedited.

I echo Senator Colm Burke's concerns about the Committee on the Future of Healthcare regarding the health services over the coming years and the effective exclusion of this House, one of the two Houses of the Oireachtas, from involvement in the process. It is a dangerous precedent to exclude a House of the Oireachtas. I ask the Leader to call in the Chairman of the committee to explain her position to the Seanad and to do so as quickly as possible.

Many improvements have been made, and as improvements continue to be made in our services and with the progressive changes we have brought to child care, paternity leave, marriage equality law, the children's referendum and ongoing improvement in the economy and the employment rate, the idea of a Border poll will become more and more attractive as we try to achieve our goal of making this country and this island the best place in the world in which to raise a family, grow up and grow old with dignity. I have no doubt we can achieve this goal if we continue to work together with our brothers and sisters North of the Border. The old adage will be proven to be true, as we do this, that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.