Mr. John Curtis:

I thank the Senator. Anti-bullying ambassadors are a means of engaging with some of the older pupils in a school who can talk to younger kids, especially when they come into the school. They can tell those new pupils that if they have issues they should be sure to report them to a responsible adult. In that context, I refer to having enough people in schools to enable us to designate form teachers and give some additional hours to people like year heads and extra resources to guidance counsellors. That is important, especially in the early stages, because the changeover from primary school to post-primary school can be quite traumatic. We have found in recent years that we are doing more work in that sphere. The induction procedures we undertake in schools are crucial. It is also very important to engage the parents in that space as well. The indicative programme to which I referred earlier gives us a sense of what is possible in schools.

Turning to the subject of identifying behaviour, this is a key aspect and it is evolving all the time. I listened to Ms Stella O'Malley's engagement with the committee previously. I found it very interesting, because in my time a gentleman called Brendan Byrne wrote the books on bullying. We brought him into schools to speak to staff and parents. Ms O'Malley's language is very interesting in this regard and I was very taken with it because I am learning in this area as well. This is an important point. All our school communities are still learning about bullying and that is why we need training. She talked about being an "upstander" rather than a bystander and referred to the phrase, "if it's mean, intervene". Those are beautiful little epithets we can use ourselves. I reiterate that I am still learning in this space as well.

The question regarding when may be the right time for schools to engage with this area is an interesting one. On one level, I will throw up my hands and say that we have been so busy in the last couple of years with other things that we have just not had time to address this area. Senator Dolan is quite correct, though, about this being a crucial topic. It is so important that we must re-engage with this aspect as soon as we can. We must create an awareness of this issue, review our anti-bullying policies and examine the training it is possible to make available for teachers. We must also look at outside assistance for schools. When I am in a situation where, as a principal, I am left shaking my head because I do not know what to do, some counsellor should be available to assist. The Ombudsman for Children referred to perhaps having a counsellor available in each school, but I do not know if that might be possible. However, there should certainly be some outside agency that it would be possible to ring when a teacher finds himself or herself stumped by a situation. It is also often necessary to have people to talk to parents as well.

In the context of restorative justice, often the difficulty we have is talking to the parents of the pupils involved and getting them on board, so to speak, in the context of the solutions that we have in mind, so that extra year and that extra help would be hugely important for the system if we could get the structures around it and managed in a proper way.

As Mr. Mulconry mentioned earlier, CAMHS is so difficult to engage with at the moment because of time pressure and NEPS as well because people are doing so many different things.