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GE2024Policy MattersWELCOME TO POLICY Matters, a series from The Journal that takes a deep dive into the ideas and solutions proposed by Ireland’s politicians on some of the biggest issues of the day.
As part of the series, The Journal sits down with different spokespeople from across Ireland’s political parties to take a deeper look at what they believe needs to be done across areas like housing, health, the environment and childcare.
Over the course of the 2024 general election, we will be taking a special look at some of the proposals from different political candidates that might otherwise slip under the radar.
As part of that, we caught up with Green Party senator and general election candidate Pauline O’Reilly to talk about forest schools.
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AS PART OF their general election manifesto, the Green Party has included a number of proposals around ‘affordable, green schooling’.
Included among these is a pledge to oversee a pilot ‘forest school’, which the document describes as “a model of schooling for young children which has proven to be successful in Scandinavia.”
The Journal caught up with Green Party senator and candidate for Galway West Pauline O’Reilly to learn more about her party’s plans.
O’Reilly explained it like this: Forest schooling is essentially about outdoor education. Children will still do academic subjects but in a “different” setting where they can explore the outdoor environment.
And no, it’s not just for a couple of hours a day or a week, the Green Party wants to introduce a pilot model where most of the school day every week is spent outdoors, “rain, wind or shine.”
“There’ll be shelters. So it’s not as if you’re literally standing in the rain all of the time. You’re wrapped up every day to do that, to be outdoors,” O’Reilly said.
“If there was a willingness to go beyond the day a week, which we would hope that there would be, then you would have academic subjects outside. But currently, the way it operates is that it is very much hands-on in nature, outdoors, playing, going for a walk, jumping in puddles, you know?
“And we’re talking about primary school here. So it’s really before there’s serious exams coming up.”
O’Reilly explained that it is all about building a love and respect for the natural world.
“The reason for it, from our point of view, is that you can’t protect what you don’t know.
“And it’s the things that you love that you are going to respect.”
The Green Party envision the pilot operating via the Department of Education on the basis of existing primary schools voluntarily putting themselves forward to take part.
“I don’t think it’s probably feasible to have large schools turning into forest schools. But certainly, if there are smaller schools that want to become part of the pilot, I think that that would be what we’re looking at,” O’Reilly said.
“It might sound a bit out there, but actually it works very well. They do it in the UK aswell, and kids love being outdoors.”
O’Reilly made the point that when she was growing up, children spent much more time outdoors because there was no social media.
“We weren’t online as much as our kids are. It’s really about trying to foster that within the school hours, because there is a lot less outdoor time by kids,” she said, adding that it also has the benefit of being another form of physical activity for children.
In terms of being prepared for the temperamental Irish weather, O’Reilly said funding would have to be put in place to make sure children have the appropriate outerwear like coats and shoes to participate, no matter what the weather on any given day.
“It’s still a relatively small amount of money. We’re talking about a pilot,” O’Reilly said.
And no, the concept isn’t literally confined to forests. Schools in urban areas may opt to take part but in green areas like parks – basically anywhere children can have the opportunity to “commune with nature”.
When it was put to O’Reilly that this concept might be a hard sell for many parents in Ireland, she countered that a lot of parents have already embraced the idea of outdoor preschools and love them.
“The overall premise here is that you protect what you love, and fewer and fewer of us, including adults, are spending time in nature.
“We know that the natural world is under threat, but we also know it’s better for us, our mental health and our physical health, to be surrounded by the environment.”
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A precedence has been set with this. Well meaning as it is. Will not other survivors of state ineffectiveness want something similar.
@AnthonyK: At a risk of sounding controversial, I think this should have been dealt with under some form of compensation or redress rather than some blanket thing.
That it doesn’t preclude future settlements is an odd thing.
However, I’m more onboard with the Gov actually doing something rather than nothing for those people it’s completely failed.
maybe hold tony hoolahan to account? no, no, that would be too much to expect of this snide government.
@Niall English: What specifically should he be held to account for?
Are they going to do this for all individuals who have been failed by the state (and how is that defined)? There’s plenty of people who have suffered, including Stardust victims, people who can’t get or afford homes.
The amount of misinformation out there around what happened with cervical check is mind-blowing. The way some people talk you’d swear that the testing service actually gave people cancer.
@Jason Memail: Quite the opposite, it didn’t tell them that they had cancer so they didn’t receive the treatment they needed, in a nutshell
@Brian D’Arcy: That’s absolutely false, and part of the misinformation that’s common on this subject. 1) These women received tests from cervical check which told them that cancer cells were not present. 2) These women subsequently developed cancer, and a review of their original tests was carried out. 3) The reviews showed that the earlier tests missed what may have been cancerous cells, with these reviews aided by the fact that the reviewers knew what they were looking for, since the patients had developed cancer.
@Jason Memail: 4) The decision was made, and this is the real crux of the issue, not to go back and tell those women that the earlier tests missed the potentially cancerous cells, mainly because what good would it do? They now had cancer and knowing an earlier test missed it wouldn’t change that. 5) Overall, the suggestion that cervical check didn’t tell these people they had cancer is demonstrably false, because the only reason the reviews were carried out on the initial tests is because they had cancer, which they knew about. 6) Going back and checking original tests when something like this happens is standard practice, and the right thing to do in order to improve future testing, but
@Jason Memail: 7) you can argue whether or not it was the right decision not to inform people about what the earlier tests missed, but it would not and could not have changed the fact that they now, sadly, had cancer, and 8) Knowing that an earlier test missed something could not have allowed them to start treatment earlier, because it’s in the oast. 9) If you want to know the specifics of it, I’d suggest checking out care2much on Twitter, who has written some incredibly detailed threads on the subject.
While this is welcome and like one commentor said that it should have been done with compensation.
As a survivor of the industrial state/religious run institutions we never got compensation we were give an “Award” as if we won something, we cannot get enhanced medical cards that the survivors from the mother and baby home were afforded, we cannot get a contributary pension even though we had to work in these institutions, we now get another slap in the face by being excluded from theses tax benefits. I live in a council house and am grateful for that, I live with my ill husband and disabled totally dependant 23 year old son was told that I can purchase the house for a minimum of between 60 and 80 thousand euro, cannot get a mortgage as my husband is 70 as the cut off is 69 and we’ve have no where to go to help buy the house so our disabled son would have a roof over his head if anything happened to us.
have your say