Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the speakers for the quality and depth of their presentation. As we are so far into the topic of bullying, we can really begin to delve into specific items and tease things apart. I do not intend to go over much of the ground that has been covered already. I had a look at the UNESCO report, Behind the Numbers: Ending School Violence and Bullying, and I want to talk a little about some of the trends it points out. It suggests that bullying as a behaviour, in general, is decreasing. I am interested in asking about that in the context of the quality of our longitudinal data. School bullying has been a touchstone issue for a decade at least, but our information, if we try to step further back in time than that, is probably of lesser quality. I want to give the witnesses an opportunity to comment on that.

As for the prevalence of different types of bullying, it appears, at least from the UNESCO report, that instances of physical bullying are decreasing. The report mentions that the number has decreased in almost half of countries and territories. Could the witnesses comment on the Irish-specific context of this? It is a recurring theme through this unit of work that a lot of bullying has moved online, has become cyberbullying and now has become image-based bullying because of the pressures of Instagram, etc.

I am very interested in Professor O'Higgins Norman's last comment. Anecdotally, it seems misogyny has now gone to the online space. It is hidden under the rock of the online space. I would like some insight from the experts here on those trends we find within bullying. Are we looking at something that is psychologically based, delivered over the medium of online behaviours? Are we seeing a move away from the more commonplace, old-style understanding of school bullying?