James Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will try to keep within five minutes but it is a huge area on which there is much to be said. I do not wish to repeat what many of other Senators have already said ahead of me but I do want to make a few points. I welcome the Minister to the Chamber and I commend him on this new programme.

Education is, as we all know, a lot more than the three Rs of reading, writing and arithmetic. It is originally from the Latin word, educo, which means to lead and to lead through life. As many other speakers have alluded to, including the previous speaker, this means teaching children life skills, how to learn to live and how to learn. In other words, they are learning a lot of things in school but one of the things they are learning is how to learn, how to inform themselves and how to assess information.

Well-being in schools is critically important. I refer to Senator Ó Ríordáin's quite accurate statement that when a child is three years old there is already a big difference, which is dependent on the child's background in respect of the financial state of the household. This is why the Government brought in the early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme and why it was extended. This is why the Government is looking at other child care initiatives to help address that issue.

I want to focus on well-being from a physical point of view. I have much more positive things to say about what has been achieved by this Minister and his predecessors in terms of all the new schools that have been built. In my constituency we have a new primary school being built in Lusk, a new second level school to be completed and plans for a new second level school in Rush, with schools in Balbriggan and Swords also and across the board nationally. One area that is of critical importance is, as Senator Gallagher has already alluded to, mens sana in corpora sano, a healthy mind in a healthy body. There is no doubt that Ireland's climate is not often conducive to outdoor physical exercise for children and that we need to have physical education halls in all our second level schools, but we do not.I know this is a huge financial ask but we need a cross-Government approach and recognition that this investment now will save us many billions of euro later for these children who will become our adults and are the future of our nation. They are worth investing in.

I know the Minister is under serious pressure to keep pace with our growing population and this is particularly the case in my own constituency of Fingal where we have the youngest population in the country, if not in Europe. Keeping pace with all the new schools required, rather than educating children in portakabins, is a priority for him and I welcome that. Vending machines provide an income stream in schools and we now have an opportunity to do something I have been seeking to have done since before I became Minister for Health and Children. I refer to a tax incentive for suppliers and operators of vending machines to provide water and fresh fruit, which would mean those products could be availed of cheaply in schools. We all accept that fruit perishes, unlike heavily branded and advertised high-sugar, high-salt snacks. Let us make the right thing the easy thing to do.

The local authority in Fingal is one of the leaders in sourcing sites for schools and, as a quid pro quo, PE facilities for use by the children during the day are open for the community in the evening. That does more than just provide amenities - it binds the school and the community ever closer and that is the success of a school, as others have pointed out.

Schools and teachers now realise that they cannot control the problem of social media and bullying by just looking at the school. What happens outside the school is hugely important too and the school has a huge role in influencing that. I commend the involvement of parents, volunteers and teachers in supporting their school and educating our next generation. I wish to take the unusual step of paying tribute to a woman who served on the board for 40 years and more at Rush St. Joseph's secondary school, Bernie Mahoney. Her outstanding volunteerism is like a beacon to the rest of us and, like so many other people, her commitment was 100% and never in question.

I emphasise the need for physical education to be an element of this. Exercise is not only good for the body, but is also good for the mind and for mental health. It will help children to be more at ease and to learn better. We have fantastic supports for young people in the shape of volunteerism, youth organisations, the National Youth Council, Foróige the GAA, the FAI, the IRFU, and others such as Scouting Ireland who are there for the children who are not into contact sport as much but who can learn skills and team building. We talk about inclusivity and the scouts are an example of this. They welcome children with disability and intellectual challenges with open arms and bring them into the community. Everybody wins by that. The young children who sit beside the child who looks different from other children begins to learn that difference can be a strength and both sets of children learn from it. I was speaking to John Lawlor earlier today and he said the whole ethos of the scouts is to integrate, not to isolate.

I congratulate the Minister on all the work that has been done, the huge amount of capital expenditure, the increased number of teachers and the fact that we have an increase in NEPS and SNAs. Let us not forget about the other areas we need to address, just because we are making progress, such as physical well-being, which impacts on mental well-being, the whole-school approach to guidance and the effective student support teams led by guidance counsellors, effective student and parent consultation and the authentic listening to students' voices. Appropriate curricula to suit the needs of students are critically important as we are not all the same or have the same strengths. We all need a baseline but we need to encourage children in the things they are interested in. It is a truism of life that it is only when one is engaged in something about which one is passionate or in which one is hugely interested that one will excel. All our young people need to bear this mind. Their first job is not their last and may be the route to finding where their interest really lies.