Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and Minister of State, and congratulate them on their appointments. I thank the Minister for raising the issue of consent, and I welcome his call today for this committee to examine it and to work with him on the issue. To pick up on the point he made on the amount of sexual violence in third level institutions, I would like to say that that is where we know the problem exists. A survey was completed earlier this year of more than 6,000 students, and it is from that study that this consent package has been put together. I know that the staff and students have been working on this active consent programme in NUI Galway for many years. That survey found that 29% of females, 10% of males, and 28% of non-binary students had reported that they had experienced rape or something similar. There is a real opportunity to look at the issue, not from the perspective of third level institutions, but to say that this is where we are putting in place the education that will inform students for the rest of their lives. I would like to hear what the Minister feels this committee could contribute beyond the very welcome launch of the active consent programme in NUI Galway, which he attended.