Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Dr. Downes, Professor Hymel and Professor Cefai, and my apologies for any mispronunciations. What we are talking about is, I believe, straightforward, concerns best practice, which is contained within this European framework, and it is a matter of putting it into play. Within this State, could we do with a greater amount of gathering and monitoring of incidents of bullying just to see the particular type we are dealing with, whether that is based on gender, sexual orientation, race, family circumstances and probably many other types I have not even considered? We then build that into what we need in respect of social and emotional education, particularly if that is SPHE. Beyond that we need to ensure we include children, parents and teachers in that. It is obviously vital young people are included in this part of the conversation.

A big issue for me with bullying is that we all understand the outworkings and how terrible it can be for particular children, and it can have a lifelong impact. We also get scenarios where people transfer between being a bully and being bullied. I got an understanding of what cognitive dissonance means, which is the idea that if I bully the other kid, I am not a bad person and I do it because he or she deserves it and it is not very serious in any event. From the other end it is a case that they bully me and do so because I deserve it. I imagine it is vital that that idea is built into any training programme and that people understand this, especially for parents, because parents are always afraid in the first instance that their children are being bullied and then that their child is engaged in bullying activity, which can happen to anybody. Can I put those not-too-straightforward questions to the group, please?