Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have a couple of questions I would like to put to the witnesses. I will go to the students first and maybe Ms Murphy will come in afterwards. The committee has done a lot of module work on school bullying, including a report the witnesses might have seen, and on leaving certificate reform, as Senator O'Loughlin has mentioned. The issue that came forward in both modules of work was social media and its effects on mental health, as Senator Casey has said.

We do not want to mention the dreaded word of suicide but we all know people who have died by suicide because of social media, secondary school students especially. I have encountered it in my own constituency of Wexford. We have had families communicating to this committee whose son or daughter died by suicide as a result of bullying on social media. Did that form part of any of the research the witnesses are doing around social media? There are a lot of people who do not want to talk about it, but I think it is so important that we talk about it and we make people aware that there is a lot of help out there. There was an item on Ryan Tubridy's radio show this morning about a third year student at Maynooth University who committed suicide, although the show did not say it was because of social media or anything like that. There is a lot of help out there but often people are afraid to go and ask for it, or maybe they are afraid it is not there.

Did that form part of our guests’ research? Did it form part of their conversations with fellow students? Did it form part of their research on social media companies? Do they have any interaction with social media companies such as Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook? Was it just based on research within their student cohort?