Ms Kate O'Flaherty:

That education information is provided in all those settings. It is already on the school curriculum. My colleague, Ms O'Brien, alluded to some of the resources available from the HSE, which provides evidence-based information for different age groups to parents and schools. Much more work must to be done in that area, pending the outcome of the review of the RSE curriculum. That will involve changes for every age group. The information is there. As Ms O'Brien noted, a great deal of work has been done in the past few years to build our content and resources and make it much more youth-friendly and accessible through online and social media channels. Young people would have been consulted in the development of all those materials.

Information on contraception is already there, to the extent that it is included in the HSE's resources and is provided as part of a normal consultation. I take the point that while the content and information may be there, people are not getting the knowledge and confidence they need to make those choices. That is something we can look at, in terms of how we work with partner organisations that interact with young people and women outside of school settings in particular. We need to broaden the base of the people using the one trusted set of resources. It has been important for us to have an evidence-based, factual information resource, which was developed by the HSE in partnership with young people, teachers and parents. It is helpful for young people that everybody is using the same resources and information, because they will not get confused if they have a good source of information.

Another important point to which Ms O'Brien alluded is that we now have a single foundation sexual training programme, which all adults who work with young people go through. That goes back to some of Dr. Short's points on the need for the adult population to be more open and comfortable in talking about sexuality and sexual and reproductive health. Much good work has been done in the past couple of years, and is still being done, to build those resources. We need to strengthen the partnerships we have with people, in order that the same information, evidence base and facts go out to everybody through that wider partnership.