Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not want to use the Deputy's time but I acknowledge her own consistent advocacy of fact-based and evidence-based sex education in schools. I agree entirely on that point. I will take back the view to the wider government on how this work might be done contemporaneously rather than sequentially. There is a logic in what she says. The Minister for Education will be able to articulate more accurately her Department's position on this. The programme for Government commitment is clear, and that is what we are all charged with delivering.

I will get the Deputy and the committee a note on the teacher training piece, which resides with the Department of Education. The mandatory consent classes work is going very well. Again, I will get a note for the committee but from what I can see, all our colleges are now providing consent classes as a core component of the general induction. I use the phrase "mandatory consent" but what I mean by that is that it is not something that happens somewhere on a Wednesday night but it becomes part of a student's induction in college. The uptake levels have been extraordinarily high.

The Deputy's comments about the survey are right. Politicians come out saying the findings are shocking or horrific but I am not sure that is the right reaction; the findings are stark and harrowing but give an insight into what people were experiencing. The positive from the survey was that staff and students demonstrate a willingness and desire to access training. Dr. Pádraig MacNeela of the Active* Consent programme in NUI Galway speaks very well about this, indicating the very different approach to training by somebody who has been through sexual harassment. It takes in what it is, what is consent and the attitudes, and it is quite transformational as well.

It might be useful for me to give the committee a breakdown, college by college, of the uptake levels and the progress. We have that information.