Mr. Seamus Mulconry:

As Ms O'Dwyer has said, we have all heard about the pilot and it sounds fantastic but there is no sign of it arriving to other schools. There is a real and urgent need for it. If a Minister with responsibility for finance or education makes an announcement at budget time, he or she always speaks about the increased number of special needs assistants, SNAs, but we also need occupational therapists and other supports just as much at this stage, if not more than SNAs. I certainly back that point.

On the question of statistics, the first question asked by schools is what will be done with those statistics. Much information is collected from schools but nothing ever happens to it. There is a sense that it is a box-ticking exercise. If we want to ask schools for statistics, we must tell them the reason and see that they will be used to drive policy rather than sitting on a shelf somewhere gathering dust.

On the question of an ombudsman or digital child protection officer, we must get the technology companies to formulate solutions rather than excuses. We must get them to demonstrate what the technologies can do. There have been major developments in artificial intelligence to recognise patterns across data and some of that could be used to track and identify bullying patterns at an early stage. This could serve as the tripwire to bring about an intervention. Much could be done but none of us knows as much about the technology as these firms do, so it is time somebody brought them into the conversation and held them to account.