Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister for Education on his reappointment. I am sure everyone is delighted for him. He has a significant passion for education and he fits the role exceptionally well, so I wish him well in the coming weeks and months.

This is the time of year when people who perhaps would not have much experience in water tend to explore it, via sailing or swimming or other activities. Many young people in particular go swimming in the sea and in the rivers and lakes of this country. We are an island nation and are surrounded by water, so it is a significant factor in the lives of our citizens.

For a long time I have been promoting the need for water safety education in our schools, and I am happy to say that compared with when I was young in County Clare, where residents in fishing areas in particular did not want their children to learn how to swim because they had such a fear of the sea, that kind of taboo is now gone and young people are being encouraged to engage with water safety training and learn how to swim. Even in my own parish of Ennistymon and Lahinch over 1,000 young people come to the pool in Lahinch during the winter months to learn how to swim and to get an appreciation of water safety.

It is a great privilege for young people to be able to do that, to learn how to swim, to enjoy the water and to develop a respect for the water. It should not really be a privilege but rather something that should happen automatically in every school. There is absolutely no reason every young child who leaves primary school, going into secondary school, should not have a basic understanding of water safety and the importance of water, and that they should not have acquired a respect for water. It is brought into sharp focus by the weather that we have had in the last week. The weather encourages people to use the water, and that creates risks.Thousands of young people leave primary school without any understanding of water safety and the importance of respecting water. I am calling on the Minister to give us a timeline at least as to when we can expect that water safety training and education will be a compulsory part of the curriculum at primary level.