Dr. Clíona Saidléar:

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee. We are delighted to be here. We have been engaged on this issue for some time and we have been convinced that it needs Government-level engagement and intervention. Rape Crisis Network Ireland is a specialist information and resource centre on sexual violence. We are owned and governed by our member rape crisis centres and we develop policies, responses, reactions and strategies in this area.

The focus on sexual health education is often drawn to this issue based on public debate arising out of sexual violence crimes and our sense that we could do more to prevent them. We rightly ask questions about the messages about sex and sexual relationships to which our children are exposed in our culture and the messages they receive from the sources we hope set standards of behaviour that are safe, supportive and empowering, such as from parents, schools and trusted authorities.

The questions include how should we support everyday respectful, safe and healthy sexual behaviour and whether we have fully engaged our institutions and structures to ensure our children and young people share in and contribute to evolving positive values on sexual behaviour and expectations? Curriculum content is one aspect to address, but it is vital we understand that excellence here will be ineffective in the absence of a holistic response which ensures the institutional context and care responses also support positive sexually healthy relationships. I really want to focus on matters relating to that area but I am also happy to talk about curriculum content.

Historically the State has been resistant and ambiguous towards sexual autonomy and liberation. This has resulted in silences, paralysis and gaps, not least in sexual education in the schools system. We suggest that the ambiguity with which we have treated sex education has been baked into our institutions and bureaucratic structures and it is our view that those need to be addressed if we are to serve our children adequately in this matter. Rather than one location that holds the strategic lead on this matter there are currently four Departments and at least six strategies and policies that have a role in shaping sexual health education. Each of these strategies has a role in ensuring children and young people have access to the education and supports they need to prepare them to make healthy decisions about their sex lives. It is doubtful to us that there is any one statutory location that has the full picture or oversight in the area of sexual health education, which risks leaving the Department of Education and Skills with a lack of insight into the capacities and resources it has to hand and clarity of objective in curriculum and policy development and implementation. For example members may find it surprising to hear that the relationship and sexuality education, RSE is under review at the moment. Rape Crisis Network Ireland, RCNI, submitted seven modules to the RSE review in 2015. However, this is not happening within the Department of Education and Skills and the National Council for Curriculum and Advancement, NCAA. Instead, it is happening in the HSE under the crisis pregnancy programme, within the B4UDecide programme. The HSE, of course, is working in partnership with the Department of Education and Skills.

We would bring to members' attention another difficulty in the multitude of overseeing bodies. When looking across the national strategies which the Department of Education and Skills is subject to in various manners it is clear that actions in the area of sexual health education consent, harm and violence prevention use the word "prevention" to mean different things. It has become standardised internationally to differentiate between primary and secondary prevention, not least because the two require very different capacities and activities. Primary prevention is a whole of population approach that seeks, through generalised intervention, to stop the issue from arising in the first place. Secondary intervention seeks to respond to harm, to identify it early and respond. This distinction is not consistently embedded across Government activities in this area. It is our experience that these failures to distinguish uniformly across Government creates gaps and inefficiencies at best and actions that nullify the effectiveness of each other at worst. An example is the Department of Education and Skills's action plan on bullying, which establishes whole-of-school guidance on bullying prevention, that is, primary prevention. It is an excellent resource but it seems to have abandoned addressing sexual harassment, although it continued to address cybersexual harassment, on the basis that sexual crime is dealt with by Children First. However, Children First is almost entirely about secondary prevention activities, not about primary prevention. This leaves schools with no national primary prevention action plan outside of curriculum content regarding sexual harassment, notwithstanding some excellent generalised whole-of-school school ethos and values programmes. Instead, we find ourselves waiting for children to be at risk of harm before we intervene under Children First.

Clarity and agreement at all policy levels as to what level of prevention they are engaging in is essential. We are asking for a joined-up approach. We need a national strategy. Failing that, consideration should be given to a sort of national review of the policy landscape in this area.