Mr. John Curtis:

That is a valid point. It is a matter of getting a balance between bureaucracy and engaging professionally at local level. The 2013 anti-bullying procedures raised awareness, but there was a bureaucratic aspect to them that perhaps unnerved people a little. Let us consider the language - "anti-bullying procedures". I cannot come up with better language, but I wonder about the lexicon we use when we discuss behavioural issues.

We need to train people, which is where we are falling down. We have taken our eye off the ball a little in the context of how we engage professionally and ask people to go into social, personal and health education, SPHE, classes. That is a major issue. The Deputy is correct about the bureaucracy. We want to be careful in this regard. The best resource one can give a school is to allow a principal a little leeway where a couple of hours are left over. By and large, principals are able to identify the people at school level who might be best suited to work as a form teacher with a first year class, who has a certain level of empathy, etc.

We are still flailing around a little in terms of research into what the best programmes are. DCU is doing some work and it has the FUSE programme. As to determining best practice and exemplifying it, though, we are still in genesis mode when it comes to determining what programmes will work best for us. We are all in learning mode.