Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister of State knows, Ireland has one of the poorest rates of modern European language take-up in Europe. While much of this might be explained by the fact that we use English, that, in itself, does not excuse the fact we have not been able to embed a knowledge of European languages. Employers regularly cite the lack of language skills as a major problem in the Irish workforce.

In a post-Brexit scenario, having a greater knowledge of languages will be an opportunity for Ireland. In addition to that, it is not just about languages, but understanding other cultures. As the Minister of State is aware, the problem is that there has been a shortage of language teachers at second level for quite a while. Second level school principals regularly cite one of their biggest fears as being a language teacher being ill or on maternity leave as it is practically impossible to get a substitute language teacher. I welcome the commitment in the budget to significantly increase the number of Spanish teachers. That is positive, but much more needs to be done.

Some concern has been expressed that some of the exam questions are based much more around philosophical ideas rather than students' linguistic abilities. This is something that needs to be examined by the State Examination Commission. We also have to look at an active campaign, whereby we can encourage second level students to take up languages right to leaving certificate level and beyond. Tied into that has to be a reinvigoration of the primary school languages initiative, which was announced more than a decade ago, but slowly but surely began not to have the same level of emphasis as it had in the past.

The Languages Connect Strategy, which was the foreign languages strategy launched by the Government in December 2017, was very ambitious. It set out that it believed that Ireland should be among the top ten countries in Europe for the teaching and learning of modern European languages. It set out 100 actions, but three years on, very little progress has been made on those actions. That is certainly the case with the targets of increasing the number of post-primary schools offering two or more languages by 25%, and increasing the number of students taking two languages by 25%. That has not happened. We are talking about improving attitudes to foreign language learning, and I have not seen any campaign which is able to do that.

Languages are important, and I am certain the Minister of State is aware of that, given his responsibility for European affairs. It is not good enough for us or for employers to say every so often that we need to improve our language skills.We need real programmes and real actions to be able to do that.

In terms of addressing the shortage of language teachers, a number of years ago when there was a shortage of teachers for honours maths, there was a very successful higher diploma programme that operated in UL that allowed teachers of other subjects to upskill in that area. A similar approach needs to be taken. There has to be a question as well around the registration of native speakers who happen to be teachers with the Teaching Council, and the council needs to be more open to that.

There is an enormous opportunity for Ireland here. We have a very good strategy in place, but I put it to the Minister of State that there has been very little action since the strategy was published.