Dr. Colman Noctor:

From the point of view of statistics, something being addressed and dealt with is really interesting in a bullying context. I often hear comments to the effect that something was dealt with in senior infants, but it was never resolved. We can lean on those examples. I would like to see more outcome-focused results about how something was resolved rather than whether it was addressed. There is a question of whether something is a tick-box exercise.

People ask me all the time whether a school is good or bad. There could be a wonderful school with a third year group that is particularly toxic. That involves cultures within cultures. How do we address that? We nip it in the bud early and try to manage to move on the culture rather than letting it progress through first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth year.

On the Deputy's last point regarding the contribution of bullying to suicides, I see it as considerable. In this country we are not very good at looking at psychological autopsies to determine the psychological factors that led to a suicide. Suicides become something that happened, as opposed to people digging into the why. That is something we need to look at.