Ray Butler (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would like to follow on from Senator Moloney’s point on social media and the guidelines that are in place in schools. Facebook and Twitter have no guidelines, or else the guidelines are very sketchy. Having been on boards of management down through the years, especially in secondary schools, I noted that board members had to act as judge and jury in deciding whether a young person who had not settled in well on making the transition from primary school should stay in the school and be given a second chance or be taken out of the school. One evening, after having dealt with the cases of five or six young people at a meeting of the board of management, I was traumatised. We must put in place a system for boards of management of secondary schools in this regard. The experience I had was one that I would not like anybody else to endure.