Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

That is clearly a deficit that we need to address. The real crux, though, is who delivers it. We have just had the issue of whether it should be external people. The three people here who deliver from the outside have good, positive, objective programmes. We do not, however, want to leave out schools. It needs to be inclusive because part of the problem is that it is very good in some schools - whether it is delivered from outside sources or internally - but not good at all in other schools. The committee wants to ensure that whatever is proposed is comprehensive and includes good, objective, well delivered programmes to all schools.

That brings me to the question of ethos. We did not have many references to ethos in the presentations today, with the exception of Ms Donnelly and Dr. Neary. We did in previous sessions. One of the problems, currently, is that much sex education is presented through the prism of the school's ethos. I do not know who would like to answer this but should that change fundamentally? Should we say that there is an objective curriculum, it is factually based and it is presented the same way in all schools irrespective of patronage etc? That is one of the crux issues.