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

I add my voice to some of what was said about social media companies and the requirement that they step up and that we would make them do so. They are all pervasive and therefore so is cyberbullying. There is no escaping it or down time from it. It can be difficult to monitor what your kids do on social media, particularly as they get older, and there will always be a difficulty there.

Returning to the metrics and incidents being recorded and a school making its best case scenario intervention, in some cases this will involve families that have added vulnerabilities and difficulties. When we talk about acting holistically, we probably have to think beyond bullying. We fail miserably to carry out these early interventions that would be a hell of a lot cheaper and easier and could give supports to families or, in really bad situations, go nuclear quicker by removing children more quickly from bad situations. We pay for that in the sense of bullying but also people entering into mental health service or the justice system. It is really terrible and has an impact and a huge cost. I am interested in the wider question of how this fits in. We talk about a community answer which will have to include the schools but it probably has to be more holistic than dealing with bullying in a silo.