Leo, listen to parents

EARLIER this week, Simon Coveney spoke for all concerned parents when he insisted that we need to restrict smartphone use by our children. As reported in this newspaper on Thursday, the Tánaiste believes that we must ‘have an element of control in terms of where and when children can access phones’. He also believes that we need measures to ‘block certain content’.

If this is obvious to the Tánaiste, why can’t Leo Varadkar see the gravity of the problem from the same perspective? The Taoiseach is correct – smartphone use by children does impact on their concentration and education. But that is only one of a vast range of problems faced by children with access to a smartphone.

If the Taoiseach was really interested in tackling the problem, he would not, for example, back Richard Bruton’s proposal to leave it to individual schools to set policy on smartphone use. That is because the most serious of the problems occur outside school. This means that schools can only do so much, and surely it is unreasonable to expect them to do what any responsible government should itself be doing.

Mr Varadkar would do well to stop passing the buck and listen, first and foremost, to parents – including his own Tánaiste.