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Remarks at the Launch of the Malahide Community School Literacy Initiative

13th March 2013

Ladies and Gentlemen and pupils,

I am delighted to be here today for this important event. I would like to thank Cora Tighe for her kind invitation to launch this literacy initiative, and all of you for that very generous welcome. I am impressed by the great enthusiasm that is being shown for this launch not just by those here in this room but also by those who are watching these proceedings via Skype.

Ina theannta sin, is mian liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl do na daltaí den 4ú bliain a thug an ghabháil álainn ceoil sin as Les Misérables dúinn agus is cúis áthais dom a chloisteáil go bhfuair sibh cuireadh rannpháirtíocht a ghlacadh i bhFéile Cheoil Phort Láirge, rud nach ionadh liom. Déanaim comhghairdeachas libh as éacht mar sin a bhaint amach.

[I would also like to thank the 4th year students for that beautiful musical rendition from Les Miserables and I am delighted, but not surprised, to hear that you have been invited to take part in the Waterford Musical Festival. I congratulate you on that achievement.]

Last September I had the pleasure of addressing the Irish Reading Association of Ireland and I quoted the words of the great liberator and champion of civil rights Frederick Douglas: ‘‘When you learn to read, you will be forever free’. I think those words bear repeating. When we learn to read and to write; to understand letters on a page, and to create our own sentences using those letters, we are handed a great gift in life; a gift that allows us to engage fully in society, to educate and inform ourselves, to open our minds, to realise our possibilities and to discover new worlds and new ways of thinking.

The ability to read and to write are fundamental tools on our journey through life, and if we fail to equip our citizens with these tools we have failed them on a most fundamental level; we will have failed to set them free to explore and engage and interact with society, and to play their part in their communities, making their own important contribution to those communities and to their society as a whole.

Equally tragically, if we do not provide the ability to read and write we will have made it very difficult for these citizens to express their creativity and to celebrate and nurture it by engaging in the wonderful world of literature, discovering the strength of their imagination and the valuable transformational power that reading can bestow on us.

As Ireland’s first Minister for the Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht I can attest to the valuable, and emancipator of creativity. As a nation it is one of our greatest strengths, and one that is evidenced by the number of brilliant writers, playwrights and poets we are proud to claim as one of our own.

That creativity, however, is not confined to the artistic aspects of our lives and our communities, but must extend beyond that in order to bring innovation and imaginative thought to all spheres of our life; including how we do business, how we construct our communities, how we ensure justice and equality within our society and how we relate to each other and to our environment. There is rich potential in creative and innovative industries, industries that can only flourish in a sustainable way if they are rooted in creative communities where every child and adult has the opportunity to contribute and to imagine.

Of course, in this digital age, the way people work and learn and communicate with each other has changed very much indeed. Nowadays, people who are not enabled to be digitally literate are also at risk of becoming outsiders in a society where effective engagement is now so closely tied to ability to use the internet, or chat forums or to send and respond to emails or skype family members living abroad. More and more information is now being made available solely on line; more and more people are using modern technology to engage in everyday communication; and more and more workplaces rely on a digitally literate workforce in order to compete effectively in a global economy.

I am delighted, therefore, that digital literacy is included as an element of this literacy programme; a recognition that becoming part of the information society can no longer be viewed as an optional extra in life but must be seen as an essential and liberating life skill.

It has been deeply disturbing to hear in the past year reports that Ireland’s literacy rating has slipped considerably in the OECD ranking. These reports strongly underline the importance of literacy programmes such as the one that is being celebrated here today. Malahide Community School strives to provide a Literacy rich environment and I know that, at the core of their strategy, is a determination that all of their students will be enabled to go out into the world with good reading, writing and digital media skills; skills that will allow them to be active participants in society, to reach their potential and to live a life where they can avail of opportunities, have rewarding careers and aim to understand and realise all the valuable possibilities that life has to offer them.

I know that the school motto here is ‘Sapientia, Veritas, Ingenium’: ‘Wisdom, Truth, Talent’. In so many ways it is through the wisdom of the written word that we are enabled to learn the truths about the world around us and our own place in that world and discover how we, as unique individuals, can make our contribution to that world, using our own distinctive talents and skills.

I was very impressed by the exhibition of the work that has taken place in the school based on the key elements of the national literacy strategy and am also impressed by the considerable number of literacy activities that have taken place here in the current school year including the formation of a Literacy focus group, the selection of a writer in residence, a staff ‘think in’ and visits to the school by published authors.

You also, of course, held a poetry competition and we were privileged earlier to hear Claoine Dolan read her winning entry – a beautifully written poem about the right of everyone to belong, and to participate, and to share all that is great and enjoyable and inspiring in this world.

I congratulate Claoine on her creativity and talent and on the manner in which she has used her imaginative voice to send out a strong message to us all about the importance of inclusion and fairness within our society.

It is a message that is at the very, very heart of the literacy initiative that I launch here today. I would like to commend Malahide Community School, and in particular all those involved with the literacy initiative, for all they do to encourage the on-going development of literacy skills for the pupils in their care. You are truly passing on a valuable, liberating and life enhancing gift.

Mar fhocal scoir, is mian liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil libh uile go léir as fáilte a chur romham anseo inniu agus guím gach rath ar an tionscnamh tábhachtach seo agaibhse.

[I would like to conclude by thanking you all once again for welcoming me here today and I wish you well with this important initiative.]

Go raibh míle maith agaibh go leir.