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

I had intended to come in once but the witnesses caught my attention so I have stayed for the entire conversation. To revisit some of the issues that have been raised, I get the idea that any interventions need to take place as soon as possible, as is true in most other areas. I really welcome the commentary suggesting that multiple sites must be picked and this anti-bullying framework built into everything as opposed to asking parents to come in and telling them their kid is the main problem with regard to bullying, to use the example given. That is obviously a major issue.

We have a number of community-based programmes. The example in County Louth to which I probably halfway alluded is the Genesis programme, with which I have a familial connection, to put that on the record. This service operates parenting programmes for the parents of children of varying ages, starting from the very young. It also operates the KiVa anti-bullying programme. It runs stuff in the community and programmes connected to the schools. That serves a really good purpose but a certain cohort is missed. The witnesses spoke earlier about people who suffer multiple adverse childhood experiences. We are possibly talking about multigenerational issues or abuse connected with poverty along with many other issues. There is a wider piece of work to be done there. A holistic set of interventions with particular families is required. This probably means starting when kids are very young and dealing with a lot more than just the very specific issue of bullying.

In fairness, the witnesses have laid out quite well the sort of framework at which we are looking with regard to best practice. Can resilience be built in? As much as we want to deal with the problem of bullying and as much as we need to address it and prevent it happening, it will still happen and we need to help kids protect themselves. We talked about social media and the amount of time people spend on these platforms. We are in a world in which people are not doing what they did 20 or 30 years ago, which is to go out and interact with their peers. There were good and bad points. People fell out with each other and had fights but learned how to get over it. To a degree, those skill sets are just not as readily available to kids these days. That is probably an issue.