Ms Rachel O'Connor:

This is an interesting aspect of school life. My immediate reaction is that if it is voluntary, someone who is misusing or abusing substances will not engage. It is important that we have substance misuse and abuse policies up to date. Again, it is back to information, to creating awareness and to getting buy-in from parents. There is a space here in terms of the size of schools. If one is in a school with more than 1,000 pupils, it will be much harder to regulate and to keep an eye on everybody in the building. Supports need to be put in place, particularly for larger schools, where these kinds of issues can manifest themselves in an insidious way in the background. Very often, schools have a good handle on issues where drugs are involved, and strong substance misuse policies. Again, it comes back to awareness and getting in early, in first year. Again, parent buy-in is important. The Deputy has an interesting proposal.