Ms Ann O'Dwyer:

I agree completely with what Mr. Curtis and Mr. Mulconry said. Building resilience is the role of the school, of course, but also, clearly, the role of the family and wider community. There need to be opportunities to build resilience. If any of us look back and consider what built our own resilience, it was all the relationships we had since we were young children. The school can do as much as it can but I would love to see far more happening for parents, particularly in the early years. There are some excellent parenting programmes such as the Incredible Years programme, which Mr. Mulconry mentioned is available in some of his schools. There is also the Parents Plus programme, which was developed in the Mater hospital. I would love to see those courses happening in a community context to give parents the skills needed. It is a challenging space for parents.

In regard to the types of bullying, the one that is most common at this time, particularly in terms of cyberbullying, is bullying that relates to sexual matters. We have discovered over the past number of years that, during the summer months, there is obviously far more online activity and issues then come into the school in September. Parents may not be aware of some of the online bullying and activity and it all comes to the surface when children return to school. They are fearful of different things and they disclose to the school, which then has to deal with it. That raises the issue of what we are doing to prepare and support children in advance of summer holidays. The same issue arose online when we were in lockdown. Certainly, it increased that type of activity because people had more online time. This is an area in which we need to do far more work with students of all ages to prepare them, prevent problems from happening and deal with them if they do.