Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

My response to the Minister, whom I thank, is that she has not answered the question I asked. I asked whether she endorses and whether it is part of her plan to have non-ethos-based sexual education in schools. The Minister mentioned everything else, such as how information should be fair, informative, accurate and scientific, but I asked her specifically about the non-ethos-based sexual education as the committee recommended reviewing the eighth amendment as part of a measure to help to reduce the number of crisis pregnancies to eliminate the need for terminations in this country. In this way, young people would be better educated, in a non-ethos-based way, as to how to be sexually active without it resulting in a crisis pregnancy. That was how it was recommended at the time, and it is probably being recommended here also, for other reasons. The Minister, within two years of being appointed Minister for Education, recognises that the examination of this area and the implementation of recommendations have proceeded at a snail's pace, so her first step should be to ask why and determine how she, as the person now in charge, can address the stagnation.

The second question the Minister has not answered for me concerns the now ten-year-old call by the Rape Crisis Network of Ireland for a study to be carried out on the amount of sexual harassment and bullying in our secondary school system. It has been reported that more than half of the young people in secondary schools would not know who to go to if they felt sexually harassed. Has the Minister two minutes to answer my questions, which are on non-ethos-based sexual education and the commissioning of the report that was called for several times?