Mr. John Curtis:

We are obviously using a moral framework in our Catholic schools. The point we are making is that parents are the prime educators in this sphere. That is what we are attending to. In the context of anything that emerges obviously we need to talk to the parents at local level. We represent Catholic schools. Parents send their children to Catholic schools. We are cognisant of that and we deal with those parents. We are trying to educate children to deal with the difficulties they will face in this world, based on some moral framework that gives them some moral compass as they move through. Where we might differ in the context of our opinions is that we do not believe it is possible to have purely objective information; everything in some respect is values based.

I recently came across a circular issued by the Department in 2010 further to the deliberations of the National Youth Council at the time. The point it made was that schools needed to properly engage with the RSE programme. It also made the point that programmes based on information alone are very limited in the learning outcomes they can achieve and can, in fact, be counterproductive in influencing values, attitudes and behaviour. We are encouraging issues to be dealt with in a discursive manner and students can talk about issues and can be presented with the challenges or the promise of a Catholic framework. Obviously children and their parents have to engage with that. If parents do not want their children to be part of an RSE programme, they have the capacity to withdraw their children from it.

It is a complex issue. I contend that we have been dealing with it at school level very productively. It is important that we review the issue because obviously, as I said, we have differing views in the sector. I firmly believe there needs to be a focus on talking, on the dialectic and on engaging with the students. The crucial aspect is that we talk about everything and put the focus on the "R" in RSE. Relationships are more and more important in the context of the issues we are dealing with in schools today. Children can be in very lonely places now because we are in the digital age and because of smartphones. The capacity to engage that was part and parcel of our generation is no longer there to the same extent, with all the attendant mental health issues that might accrue from that. This is a highly complex area.

I am very interested as well in-----