Ms Ann O'Dwyer:

I might respond to the last question first on whether the Department is collecting enough data.

The review of the 2013 anti-bullying procedures gives a fantastic opportunity for the Department to look at how it can collect data. In that is an annual checklist, which should be reviewed. I agree with my colleagues, who have stated this already. The Department should use that checklist. It could easily be developed into an online form on which to collect data. Every school has to put this in front of its board of management every year. They should be asked additional questions, such as how many cases they had to deal with in the year, how they dealt with them, what their success rate was and what methodologies they used.

Getting back to the Deputy's previous question, I suggest that the restorative approach is one of the most beneficial and sustainable approaches to deal with bullying, whether it is bullying within the school or bullying that permeates outside the school or the online space. Mr. Mulconry mentioned this already. If a restorative approach is used, it means that the perpetrator of the bullying is not demonised. He or she is also a young person growing up and our educator function is that he or she learns not to engage in this behaviour. A restorative approach, therefore, means that person must show that he or she takes personal responsibility and empathises with the feeling of the person who is being offended and really hurt by this. There is a whole process around that.

I suggest that at the moment, we do not have enough of a strategic approach to training teachers in all our schools in that approach. Teachers need to have basic skills to deal restoratively with behaviour in the classroom. Dealing with bullying in a restorative way requires skills and competencies that not all teachers have, however. If we are being strategic when we are reviewing the procedure, that is one area in which we should put in cyclical training. Teachers need to be renewed in this approach at least every two or three years. When it works, it is amazingly positive for everybody.

One of the most important elements is that having reported the bullying, the victim is not worried that something will happen again. If the punitive method is used, the victim is still going around worrying if something will happen to him or her again because he or she was a snitcher, whereas if one uses a restorative approach, the victim is empowered in the process but the relationship is also restored. That is one area I would like to see included in a very strategic way, where we decide we will train a team of teachers in every primary and post-primary school in a cyclical way. We know this is an evidence-informed approach that really works and is sustainable. It has implications for future life and future relationships, and it is a really important educator function of our schools.