Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the delegates for their opening presentation. I am a mother of teenagers. They tell me that as a politician I should get my head around issues. They have other sayings but I could not repeat them here. Mental health and sexual health issues have been taboo subjects for a very long time. I remember a teacher in my school handing out a book in the classroom about sexual education matters. She told us to bring it home and read it. In my view, it should not be part of a teacher's job to teach classes in relationships and sexuality education, RSE, or social, personal and health education, SPHE. This work should be done by specialists such as doctors and other professional health care workers who could come to the schools for as little as half an hour a week. This would be preferable to asking teachers to deal with these matters in religion class or as part of the SPHE programme. Young people today have very different views from mine. I have four children at home who are constantly on my shoulder. They think differently about things. They look at the space differently, whatever that means.

I note that 91% of young people surveyed think that participating in RSE at school is either important or very important. If nothing else comes out of the presentation, we should take note of that survey result and the number of young people who regard this programme as important. Qualified people who can speak openly and honestly to young people should be teaching these classes. In the case of my teenagers, they had no intention of discussing anything about themselves or their friends with a teacher who was also teaching them maths or religious knowledge.

I used to give talks to transition year classes in my local schools. The previous Government introduced a science education policy. A bus used to travel around the country to introduce science subjects to schoolchildren. I suggest using a bus which could travel to both primary and secondary schools and would be staffed by qualified personnel. I suggest it would only need half an hour's class time during the week for students to use the resources on the bus and to ask questions. Booklets are available in doctors' surgeries and in maternity hospitals - such as in the Coombe in my neighbourhood - which describe sexually transmitted diseases. Young people are very aware of these dangers but they need to be educated about them.

The duty of the Government is to consider changes in educational programmes. The SPHE and RSE classes are past their sell-by dates and need to be replaced. I suggest that professional people should be involved rather than leaving it to the teacher who teaches religion.