Ms Moninne Griffith:

Deputy Catherine Martin asked a question about age-appropriateness. We know from research that 12 is the most common age for people to realise they might be LGBT or different in some way.

However, the age they may come out to another person is 16. That also means there are much younger children coming out earlier than 12 and there are many 12 year olds in primary schools. At the request of the Department of Education and Skills, we engaged with St. Patrick's College and DCU to develop a pilot programme called All Together Now. It is age appropriate and does not talk about safe sex or STIs, sexually transmitted infections. It starts with exploring in fifth and sixth classes the concepts of human rights, equality, diversity, difference, empathy, bullying, the impacts of bullying and how to stand up for one's friends. It introduces all these concepts in a nice, age-appropriate, soft way to ensure people who are already thinking they might be different will not feel excluded in primary school and it sets them up for secondary school.

The feedback we are getting is that the Growing Up LGBT programme is not being taught. It is only in a minority of schools that it is being covered. The suggestion around the whole-school inspections is one that came up during the course of the stakeholder consultations on the LGBTI+ youth strategy. There may be other ways and other tools which will ensure it is taught.