Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I would like to ask a couple of questions along similar lines. Dr. MacNeela mentioned that the limited education which exists in schools can be seen in the work that is being done in Galway. I ask him to explain how that can be seen and what its impact is. Obviously, it links in with the point that has been made about taking an holistic approach. Third level institutions do not exist as islands. Students have lives before, during, after and outside their lives in third level institutions.

I read the report setting out the results from Galway. On the one hand, they illustrate the prevalence in our society of problems like sexual harassment and bad attitudes to consent. On the other hand, it is striking to see that the consent workshops are having an impact across all the different metrics. The report shows there is a significant improvement in awareness levels after the workshops by comparison with the levels prior to the workshops. I definitely take the point about a need for an holistic approach. This is one of many aspects of that. Obviously, there is now a very strong evidence base for consent workshops.

I am not sure whether anyone has mentioned what percentage of students receive consent workshops at the moment. Does anyone have that figure? I presume the percentage we are dealing with at present is quite small. If we have an evidence base for saying this is an important element of education on sexual health and consent etc., how can we make it more accessible? This is the key point of all the contributions. Has anyone put a figure on how much it would cost to provide the necessary resources to roll this out on the kind of basis that would be needed to make it accessible? I accept that the question of whether this should be compulsory is an important one, but at the very least it should be accessible for every single third level student as a starting point.