Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their statements and presentations. A lot has been covered at this stage and I will not go over it all. I commend schools that are doing wonderful work. I have an ETB and other schools near me and I can see how the culture of some schools has been changed to make it one of openness, acceptance, tolerance and all of the things that were spoken about last week on "The Pat Kenny Show" in terms of the Sophie project and what happened on "Coronation Street" to stamp out hatred and intolerance everywhere. Wonderful work is being done in that regard.

I am always concerned about the lack of mainstreaming of good practice and initiatives. It is time to stop talking about this. What I want to know is if resources in terms of extra teaching time and time in general go a long way towards resolving the issue? It appeals to me to have the mental health supports on site and readily available so that issues can be dealt with efficiently and effectively. Often, what I see happen is that something starts off small and were it dealt with at a very early stage it would not progress into something that becomes quite toxic in terms of relationships between teachers, parents, boards of management and sometimes the wider community. There is a child in the middle of all of that. The challenge for us is how we address it.

What percentage of bullying behaviour could be tackled using all of the policies that we have in place at the moment but purely with targeted resources? I will ask Ms O'Dwyer first.