Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and thank the witnesses for coming in. I apologise for being late as I was in the Chamber where they are dealing with the Stardust tragedy and could not leave. I did not wish to walk out in the middle of the speeches.

I was quite struck by the suggestions on improved teacher training, changes to the curriculum and changes to the wider school environment. I had wanted to ask about those points but organically, my questions have been answered. I was struck by a point Bel made about what is the point in having a 40-page or 50-page policy document. I found myself thinking about the number of policy documents that sit gathering dust and are ignored. They are neither enforced nor implemented. The witnesses are highly articulate, very clear on what they want and what the problems are and are suggesting solutions. As we deal with a lot of people who know what the problems are but do not necessarily have solutions, it is very refreshing to have solutions forthcoming.

I am curious to know whether there is any meaningful engagement in the schools with students around policy development, implementation and enforcement because the witnesses are clear what the problems are. My question is whether the schools are listening to them. It is great that they have this research put together to show how widespread the issue is but are the schools listening? The witnesses might talk to us about their experience around that. Obviously, a lot of people are involved in this including the unions, the Department of Education and the colleges that provide the training. It is important that our guests give this positive message they are giving to us to them as well. I am curious as to whether they have engaged with them and if not, I encourage them to do so.

Finally, I suspect I may be opening a can of worms but at the end of her speech, Rachel stated that our guests were discussing AI and they have many opinions that they are eager to share. We are eager to hear them as well and while I appreciate this is a very open-ended question, we have been engaging a lot with advocacy groups around this, as well as some of the social media providers themselves. I am not a user of many different social media platforms. I am not going to start naming names but I am making an assumption that the witnesses are all active users and their experiences with social media would also be very useful, given that we have had the companies' perspective here, if they can give that in seven minutes.