Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their detailed presentations. I have questions for each and every one of them. What do they consider to be, or how do we define, age-appropriate materials? How do we ensure that they are not delivered too late or too early? What exactly is their advice on this and how it should be done?

Ms Byrnes spoke of the use of facilitators in delivering sexual health education. How does she envision this happening at a national level? Would she advocate for facilitators to be employed by the Department or contracted? How do we ensure a level playing field and that all schools get the same type of programmes? Would it be a weekly programme or module? I presume, given what Ms Lennon said, that if outside facilitators are employed, they would then have to have training on how to engage young people with disabilities and on easy-to-read materials and methodologies. Ms Byrnes also mentioned the feedback survey on her module, which is fantastic. It is the way to do it. Are we getting a sense of what is children's sense of this? Are we tapping in enough, or does she think we should conduct some kind of national survey of our youth on their attitudes towards or understanding of sex, consent and relationships and then design programmes? Does she think enough studies have been done?

Regarding the growing up LGBT and anti-bullying programme to be included in the whole school inspections, does Ms Griffith feel this is not being taught across the board in all schools? How does she envisage this working? It is subject-orientated when the inspectors come in, so would that be a module instead of SPHE or sex education? How exactly would that work in the whole-school evaluations? Should it be included not just in whole-school inspections? Is it ever included in the incidental inspections? We used to call them drive-bys. Perhaps that is a good way of checking up as well. I was not quite clear on the anti-bullying programme being included in the whole-school inspections. Is that the Stand Up! awareness week or is it the anti-bullying policy? Do the witnesses believe that the ethos of the school interferes with the provision of fact-based and informative sex education?