Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I join the Cathaoirleach in his words of welcome to our distinguished guests and, of course, to Breda and Liam. Breda and Liam are here because I supported a cancer fundraising event at Patrician Secondary School in Newbridge that raised €6,000 in memory of a wonderful person who worked in the school, Cathryn Shaw. If you knew Cathryn, you knew somebody who was full of love and full of friendship. She always had the biggest hello, the biggest smile and the biggest heart. The school is bereft without her. She died quite suddenly earlier this year, shortly after receiving a cancer diagnosis. I want to let her family know we are thinking of them. I refer to Sandy, Gary, Mark and all her siblings, and particularly her sister, Mary and her good friend, Dee. Her memory and legacy will live for a long time in Patrician Secondary School and the town of Newbridge.

There was a guy hanging around Dublin this weekend. I got to see him in Croke Park on Sunday night. This was a certain Mr. Bruce Springsteen. There was a debate on the radio this morning about ageism and what we need to do as we grow older, but to see a man of Bruce Springsteen's age giving a concert as he did was something else. I raise this issue because he mentioned my hometown of Rathangan during the concert, because that is where his maternal great-great-grandparents came from. The mayor of Freehold, Kevin Kane, was in Rathangan over the weekend. We planted a copper beech tree there because Bruce Springsteen’s great-great-grandmother, Ann Geraghty, brought a seed of copper beech tree from there. This was the tree he climbed and sat under and which meant a lot in his life. Bruce, of course, visited in the last 12 months. They are building a new museum dedicated to Bruce Springsteen in Freehold, but there is a wonderful opportunity to use some national funding to develop that twinning and friendship so we can mark Rathangan as a spot for tourism and link it with Springsteen.

I also want to give a shout-out to and congratulate 12 parents’ councils of primary schools in south Kildare, which have come together. Today they have launched their campaign to have no smartphones for children in their schools. It is significant that this call is coming from parents. We all know that generally this is a matter of peer pressure and young people say that to their parents. We know the dangers of smartphones for young people in terms of security, content, access and bullying, so I want to commend them. I hope that other schools will join them.

Another issue I want to bring up is in relation to school transport. Curragh Community College is presently taking an extra 35 students from Newbridge and 106 from Kildare town. There was no school bus there. There will be a new school in McKee Barracks to cater for all of these. The tender has gone out, but we need to see a school transport programme in September for these.