Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 133: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government his views on the Greenflag initiative; and the support he gives to schools to encourage greater environmental awareness. [2968/12]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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The Green Schools environmental education programme, coordinated by An Taisce, has been operating very successfully in Ireland for the past 15 years. The programme is coordinated at international level by the Foundation for Environmental Education. The Green Schools initiative provides a great opportunity for young people to learn how we can live more sustainably and protect and improve our environment. It fosters a strong sense of citizenship and leadership among students that spreads beyond the school and into their homes and the wider community. Schools are awarded Green Flags when they achieve certain targets under a number of environmental headings - waste and litter, energy, water, transport and biodiversity. Other themes under development are Global Citizenship and Climate Change.

Over 3,500 schools in Ireland are currently taking part in the programme; this represents over 84% of all schools nationally, with over 700,000 students and nearly 50,000 teachers and staff involved. To date, 2,306 schools have been awarded Green Flags.

The success of the Green Schools programme is further illustrated by the demand for the programme to be extended to our post-second level institutions. In 2010, UCC became the first third-level campus in Ireland, and the world, to be awarded a Green Flag.

Alongside the central objective of raising environmental awareness, the Green Schools programme also has the added benefit of assisting participating schools in identifying and achieving cost savings. Costs are reduced through diversion of waste from landfill, and reductions in energy and water usage. An Taisce estimate that schools achieved a combined minimum saving of approximately €3 million during the 2010-2011 academic year.

My Department continues to support the Green Schools and Green Campus programmes and provided funding of €200,000 to An Taisce for the operation of the programmes in 2011. The programmes are also supported by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, local authorities, and private sector sponsors. My Department also supports other environmental educational initiatives, through the funding of small, local environmental projects in partnership with local authorities through the Local Agenda 21 partnership fund, for which I provided €395,000 in 2011. My Department has developed a primary school teachers' resource - Eco Detectives - on climate change and the environment and this was distributed to all primary schools in 2011. The Environmental Protection Agency has also developed a second-level resource entitled 2020 Vision: A Closer Look at Ireland's Environment. The theme of sustainable development is also integrated into a number of subjects in the curriculum in primary and second level schools, including geography, history, science, home economics and business.