Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It was great to see so many people out and about enjoying facilities at the weekend. I was in places such as Dún Laoghaire, Blackrock, Dalkey and Killiney and saw a lot of responsible behaviour. The aftermath is clear to see. Parking was a particular feature of places like Dalkey and Killiney. It seems many people drove there to go swimming, go to the beach or whatever it was, but then parked wherever they wanted. While it is wonderful to welcome people to our area and it is great to see people using the amenities, we cannot have a situation where residents are impounded in their houses and people cannot access roads around the area.

Litter is another consequence. I pay particular tribute to a young girl in my area, Flossie Donnelly, who has an organisation called Flossie and the Beach Cleaners. They collected 74 kg of waste in Sandycove yesterday, which gives an idea of just how much litter was left behind by people. Most of the solution to that is for people not to leave that waste behind, but part of it is for councils to provide easily accessible bins. I pay tribute to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council for putting on extra bins in places like Blackrock. I saw people using them, which is great. Flossie Donnelly has a campaign at the moment, which is a petition to have environmentalism become a core subject in our curriculum at all levels in school. There is a great deal of merit to that suggestion. There is a petition on the flossieandthebeachcleaners.com website and I encourage Members to look at it.

We need to look at including a whole range of subjects in the curriculum, be it digital citizenship, sex, identity, relationships, environmentalism or coding and programming.These are the skills children will need in the future. Much has changed since the curriculum was drawn up and we need to have a debate in this House about what should be in that curriculum, what it should be addressing for the future and what skills the children who are currently in school are going to need when they go out into the adult world and become functioning citizens.