Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Sometimes when we give compliments, it comes out as being patronising, but I compliment Ms Exton, Ms Neville and Mr. Byrne, who are so impressive. I thank them very much for taking their time this morning to come and present to us. They describe, with such passion, the difficulties that we experienced in our secondary school system and, probably to a lesser extent but it still relevant, in our primary school system, that have been going on for years. We can talk about these issues and we recognise them. We know the outputs and outcomes of those difficulties and yet, as legislators and Departments, it is only this year that we have finally put the ISSU on the NCCA. I want to wish them every success in their placement there. They should make their voices heard as loud and clear as they possibly can.

When it comes to choice, if I had a magic wand, I would change it so that every school would have both sexes and would be a gender-empowering environment, which we seem to have really struggled with the past number of years and that is a real pity. However, it will come down to choice. As Ms Exton said, if you go to a mixed school, you have the accessibility to the non-traditional female or male subjects. In our school at home, a tiny number of girls are doing metalwork or woodwork. However, the culture and environment in the class still has, according to my girls, toxic masculinity. It is not conducive to learning for them to stay in that environment. My two young ones at home who are doing junior certificate this year will not do woodwork or metalwork for the leaving certificate because they are both the only girls in their class. It is not much fun or a nice environment. Even though we need to recognise that we need to make classes available to all students, whether it is predominantly traditional female classes to males or vice versa, what will we do about the culture and environment that exists when we do make them available?

Also, I have a real concern that when we add new subjects, we will have to drop some, but which ones? I heard teaching talking in the media only this morning about how they do not want to be overloaded by things constantly being added to their workload. What traditional subject would the guests drop to try to empower and to make new and more subjects available?

On RSE, I do not even need to just take the guests’ word for it, because I have four young adults at home. They come from a school that I think is quite progressive. Yet, their accessibility to RSE has been hit-and-miss, depending on the year that they had it. RSE should be embellished. It is probably singularly the most important class and skill set that we need to teach our children for them to be able to navigate, as Ms Exton noted, this constant barrage of crises that the world of social media and information has opened them up to over the past five or ten years. It is not being taken as treated as seriously or as comprehensively as it absolutely should be. What directions should be given to the Department and the Minister for Education to show it is not just essential but is absolutely fundamental that we empower our young students with those tools that they should be getting but are not in RSE? We absolutely must make it fundamental and mandatory and make sure that it is not just two classes that are substituted with study classes. It should absolutely be far bigger than two classes. The skills that we need and all of the negatives that arrive in society because of the lack of those teachings are evident in all of our women’s and men’s aid organisations. In addition, it is evident in all the statistics Ms Neville mentioned earlier that our young people are reporting regarding sexual abuse, sexual harassments and all the negatives and nastiness in society.