Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. I acknowledge that, unfortunately, bullying is not the preserve of our school system. It is rife across all of society, including politics, as Deputy Ó Ríordáin noted. I welcome Dr. Muldoon's comments in response to that point. I concur with him.

I was taken by the remarks of Dr. Noctor when he stated that a poster at the door was not good enough. I agree with him. He mentioned the notion of a value system, which was an interesting way of phrasing it, from the point of view of getting to the bottom of this issue and coming up with ideas. As he rightly stated, we do not have all the answers, but asking the right questions is probably a good place to start.

I would welcome responses from our guests to any of my comments. In the context of trying to change the culture, I suspect that bullying has been around since time immemorial. That said, it is possible for us to consider primary schools in particular as the place to start that cultural shift early and create a value system. In line with what other committee members have said about policy formulation, is it good enough that we are allowing schools to create policies themselves and then merely checking to ensure they have policies rather than what is in them? Are there international examples of best practice in the centralisation of such policy formulation or, rather, in setting out that a policy's base should have X, Y and Z and that schools can add to it if they want? That may be a better way of dealing with this matter, particularly if there are schools experiencing issues.

I was taken by Dr. Muldoon's comment that the Ombudsman for Children's office had received 400 complaints. I must assume that those are serious complaints rather than relatively minor ones if parents went all the way to the Ombudsman for Children over bullying incidents. As part of this and future hearings, perhaps that issue should be examined more broadly. There is much for us as committee members to learn from Dr. Muldoon's statement.

I appreciate that many members have already asked questions and had them answered. The availability of therapeutic services and counsellors to school groups or communities is paramount, as may be the upskilling of teachers or guidance counsellors in order to identify and assist children in dealing with this problem within schools. The issue goes beyond school environments, of course. It goes to sporting clubs and other organisations that work with children. The State being able to provide aid for identifying bullying within a group, be it in a classroom, on a football team or wherever, and assisting and intervening is of paramount importance. How to encourage intervention among pupils is worthy of consideration in terms of empowerment for children. Speaking as the former Chairman of the old Joint Committee on Children and Youth Affairs, empowering children is not just about giving them an opportunity to speak on something. It is also about giving them an opportunity to tell us what they want. The examples that were cited were excellent and eye-opening.

If anyone among our guests wishes to respond to my points, I would be delighted.