Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
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I confirm I am in Leinster House. I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I am slightly taken aback by some of the adversarial comments by some Government representatives towards the trade unions in particular, particularly given they are all on the front line and doing their best to deal with the issue of bullying.

Bullying can start in school but, obviously, it moves away from school by the nature of it. As a result of the advent of smartphones, you can never really hide from it. In years gone by, you could go back to the bosom of your family and worry about it on Monday but now smartphones give the ability for bullies to be at you, intimidate you, hurt you and harm you at all hours of the day and night.

I am also taken aback by comments about the nature of the RSE programme. A total of 90% of primary schools are under the patronage of a church that believes women are second-class citizens and LGBT people are disordered. As regards the patronage issue, we only managed to amend section 37(1) of the Employment Equality Act a few years ago. I was involved in that. If a teacher is gay, divorced or a single parent, he or she is kind of under that ethos and is disadvantaged in trying to advocate for a more equal society and to point out homophobic or transphobic bullying or bullying that others people.

I refer back to something said here last week by Saoirse Brady, the legal officer for the Children's Rights Alliance. She said one challenge we have is the lack of data and that schools sometimes struggle to ascertain proper data so that we can have a proper overview of when bullying starts, how much of it is racially motivated, how much is homophobic, or gender oriented? I mentioned the age profile. We do not know how violent it is, is it about exclusion, violence or is it about taunting? That question was for everyone.

Does Mr. Ryan believe the promised Government citizens' assembly on education is an appropriate avenue for us to deal with the totality of education, how our system is structured, how the patronage model works and how within that we can have a system where the Department plays an active role in the day-to-day management of schools? Under our current system a huge amount of responsibility is left by the Department of Education to boards of management and patron bodies and therefore it dilutes the capacity of the elected representative or the constituted Department to have more of an influence than the patron bodies do.