Dr. Mairéad Foody:

I will try to answer all the questions. Yes, internationally, the literature shows that we have seen a small reduction in what we might call traditional or offline bullying. That is probably as a result of the increased awareness that young people as well as adults have of what bullying is, what constitutes bullying and the harms of bullying. That is definitely in contrast, like the Deputy said, to the literature or research that was conducted earlier, in the past 20 years or so, when we did not even know what bullying was or what we were talking about. Now it is clear that everyone recognises that there are very severe, long-term negative effects of bullying. That is one of the reasons. There are also increased amounts of money and time put into anti-bullying programmes, which are working in some cases.

Apart from that, it is important to say that, according to at least the Irish data and a lot of the international data, traditional and offline bullying is still more prevalent than online bullying, so the former is still there and has not gone away. We just have to look at human nature, and even adults and workplaces, to know that it probably will not go away, but we are looking for it to be at least reduced further with the work we do.

On the cyberbullying side of things, Dr. Mazzone might want to comment on some of her work. Cyberbullying, as I said, is not as prevalent as traditional bullying but its impact can be more severe in some cases. One incident of cyberbullying might be enough for somebody to feel so isolated and alone that his or her mental health comes under severe pressure, whereas offline bullying might continue for a little more time before that person would need to seek help. The face of cyberbullying is changing because we have so many different apps, devices, methods and means, including photos and videos, to cyberbully or to harm somebody, so that is an ever-evolving space. Again, however, in general it is considered less prevalent than offline bullying. Even on that point, though, it is really important we do not focus too much on these distinctions because young people are usually victims in both spaces or bullying in both spaces and are often in both spaces at the same time. They might be online and offline talking to their friends at the exact same time, so even trying to distinguish between how prevalent bullying is in one area or one space as opposed to another is kind of futile. We have these prevalence rates in order that we can look at the impact of our interventions, but it is really important we just think about victimisation, whatever its shape, and the impact of it, whether it happens online, offline or both. We are just concerned with young people's experiences.

I do not know whether anyone else wants to speak about prevalence or anything else. Have I answered Deputy Ó Cathasaigh's questions?