Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise some issues and I am happy enough for people to decide among themselves how to answer them as much ground has been covered.

On what the evidence shows, is it easier to build resilience in a child to help them push back against bullying in appropriate ways or to develop a culture of upstanding, which is a good word? If one were sitting around a bar, one would often hear phrases like "most people are sheep". It is not entirely true but it is not entirely untrue either. It strikes me that it is difficult to build a culture where people will stand up against and call out bullying behaviour. I know the witnesses have been trying to achieve progress on all fronts. Does the evidence show it is easier to build resilience in children? Should we be talking about that more than we have been doing?

What can be done to help parents before all this becomes a problem? I get the impression that in our society we are slow to talk about good parenting and bad parenting. It strikes me that if a child has access to tech in his or her bedroom at 1 o'clock in the morning, then the parents have already failed to some extent and something needs to change. I hope that does not sound too right wing. Is there any way we can educate parents when they are making decisions about how soon their children should have access to tech? Is it a crime against the elasticity of a child's young mind to deprive them of technology at a certain early stage of their life?

Is it possible to say it is too soon for some children to have smartphones? It is not the only way bullying can occur but it compounds the range of potentially problematic situations.

There are many more issues I could raise but I will happily cede ground to the speakers. They are the experts and I would like to hear whether what I have intuited is wrong or whether the evidence bears it out to any extent.