John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

At the outset, the concept of this Commencement debate looks somewhat technical but I will give the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, the context in which I raise it.

I am raising it following a visit by the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, and me to Coláiste Chú Chulainn, a secondary school in Dundalk, County Louth, last week ahead of Europe Day today.

First, that school is one of Dundalk's newest schools. It is really quite an incredible school because there are 44 different languages in the school from its student body. It really is representative of what Ireland's schools of the future will look like throughout the next decade. This is why I am raising this issue. It affects every post-primary school in the State of which there are approximately 760.Curriculums throughout all secondary schools are rich and broad. One of the ways a student's experience in secondary school can be enhanced is through visiting foreign countries and seeing different cultures and different societies. Some of the very first trips abroad I ever went on were during secondary school. The European Union has provided for this. In 1994, the Council of the European Union agreed to an initiative by the Federal Republic of Germany to the effect that students legally resident in a member state but not a national of an EU member state could travel on these education trips within the European Union without a visa being required. That has been law in the European Union since 1994.

Let us put that into practical terms. What does it actually mean? It means that a 16-year-old Irish-resident student studying in a school in Ireland with a non-EU passport is allowed to travel on a school educational trip anywhere within the European Union without a visa. As I have said, that has been the case since 1994 so there should be no anxiety for any such students about whether they can make these school trips on the basis of the country they are going to. I will give an example. This month, a group of students from Coláiste Chú Chulainn are going on one of their first trips abroad, to Italy. The Italian Embassy in Dublin has been really proactive and fantastic in saying that visas are not needed to travel there. However, the experience with the embassies of other countries, which I will not name here, has unfortunately not been the same. Other countries have insisted that visas are required, contrary to the rules under the 1994 decision. It is not being enforced fairly across the board. Naturally, this causes a lot of concern for students from different backgrounds who are resident in Ireland, who do not have an EU passport and who may not be allowed to travel on these trips during secondary school. On that occasion, the embassy highlighted to Coláiste Chú Chulainn that it believed a number of Irish secondary schools are unaware of the 1994 decision, do not realise it exists and believe that visas are needed. It has tried to ensure that as many as possible are informed.

I bring this to the Seanad today in the hope that we can do three things in this regard. I request that the annex to the agreement be updated to take into account that identification and passport documents are now electronic and to make better reference to these. Second, I request that all EU member states issue a communication to their various embassies reiterating and publicising anew the positive agreements that were made in this arrangement back in 1994. Finally, it is important to work with our colleagues in the Department of Education to make sure this information gets out to schools right across the way. That would be really helpful in removing this anxiety and red tape that secondary schools throughout the country are experiencing.