Ms Alex Cooney:

One of the plans we have is to try to initiate a national awareness campaign targeting parents, as we referenced in our presentation, something along the lines of healthy eating or road safety where we instil in parents the basic information around keeping their children safe online. One of the things we try to do with parents is demystify it and explain that one does not need to be a technical genius to address this at home. One needs to take some simple steps and engage with one's child. Having regular conversations is really important.

We are planning to start that campaign but we would like to work in partnership with bodies that will allow us to reach a much wider audience. It could come under the Department of Education and Skills or the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment. I do not know where the responsibility should lie at Government level, possibly with Tusla, but it needs to reach every parent, it needs to be a really simple message and it needs to be resourced in order that parents can easily find out more information if they want. At the moment we find that the parents who come to our sessions are the ones who are already worried, so in a way they are not really the key parents we are trying to get to, the ones who do not have that awareness, whose children are online and who are not engaged or are not concerned about it. It is really important that there is a joined-up approach.