Departmental Strategies Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-09 ============================================================ Gareth Scahill (FG), Nominated by the Taoiseach The Minister of State, Deputy Harkin, is very welcome to the Chamber this morning. I welcome Ireland's first national financial literacy strategy and the recent publication of the first annual review and action plan for the period 2026 to 2027. It is a comprehensive piece of work and demonstrates that the Government recognises that financial literacy is no longer simply about understanding money. It is about consumer protection, financial literacy and confidence throughout every stage of people's lives. I also welcome the progress being made, as outlined in the review. More than 170,000 students have participated in financial literacy programmes. Financial literacy is now being embedded in the new primary mathematics curriculum, and the action plan rightly places increased emphasis on fraud awareness, pensions and financial well-being. Those are significant achievements and deserve to be recognised. However, one statistic in the strategy stood out to me more than any other: 43% of Irish adults do not meet the OECD minimum standard for financial literacy. Even more concerning, 44% do not meet the minimum standard for digital financial literacy. That means almost half of adults may not have the confidence or knowledge to safely navigate an increasingly digital financial world. While Ireland performs well internationally, those figures clearly show that there is still much work to be done. As Fine Gael spokesperson on education and youth in the Seanad, I particularly welcome the strategy's recognition that financial literacy should begin early and that there are opportunities to strengthen it within the school curriculum, particularly through mathematics. We need to be ambitious about this. Every young person leaving secondary education should understand budgeting, taxation, savings, borrowing, mortgages, pensions, investing, consumer rights and, increasingly, how to recognise financial scams. While these may not be priorities for young people at this stage of their lives, they are life skills. I have previously raised the issue of online fraud in this House. I believe the strategy can become one of the strongest tools in tackling it. Criminals are becoming more sophisticated every day. Artificial intelligence, cloned voices and highly convincing impersonation scams are now part of everyday life and are affecting everybody. No amount of legislation will prevent every fraud and no bank will stop every scam, but every person who understands the warning signs before clicking a link, transferring money or sharing personal information is one less opportunity for fraudsters to succeed. Every person who becomes more financially literate is one less opportunity for unscrupulous individuals to exploit. That is why improving financial literacy is not simply an education policy or a consumer protection policy; it is also one of the most effective fraud-prevention measures available to us. The foundations have now been put in place. We have the strategy and the action plan. We have more than 100 actions. There are governance structures and funding in place. The question now is not whether we have enough ideas; it is whether we can increase the pace of delivery. The strategy recognises that there are already 55 stakeholders delivering around 110 financial literacy initiatives across Ireland. Its purpose is to support, co-ordinate and build on that excellent work rather than duplicate it. My ask today is a practical one. Will the Minister ensure that the financial literacy executive board, the steering group and the annual stakeholder forum will actively identify organisations already delivering successful financial literacy programmes, evaluate what is working, share best practice nationally and support those initiatives to reach more people more quickly? Rather than reinventing the wheel, let us harness the expertise that already exists. Let us bring together schools, credit unions, employers, community organisations and charities, identify what is working, avoid duplication and accelerate delivery. That is exactly the collaborative approach envisaged in the strategy itself. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-09/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:11+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-09