Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Chair again for that. I want to be sincere in acknowledging the significant engagement of this committee in this area in driving that issue on. It was a good coalition of similar minds at a given time because the work of this committee was reflective of the agenda which I wanted to push myself. The great work which the committee did was very beneficial to us. I salute and acknowledge that.

On the cineáltas programme, it is very clearly about an inclusive and safe environment, one of well-being and a happy environment for students. We have been very clear that there are issues around the smartphone for many students. To be clear, there are enormous advantages to technology and to the smartphones, and this is not an anti-phone message, as specifically referred to by the Chair. We are, as the Chair will be aware, rolling out at present supports to the primary schools and we are starting there. We are inviting parents to consider not purchasing smartphones for students in primary school until they leave the primary school. As I said, this is not anti-phone, as they can get any phone they want, but just not the smart phone simply because of the issues the Chair has highlighted. We see the misuse of smartphones and children being open to content that nobody would want them to see and which they carry in their pockets all of the time.

We have provided guidelines to the schools and we are inviting the parents' associations here. This is an issue, and the Chair is right, in that this very much happens after the school day. As we want to be supportive, we have invited parents' associations to come on board with, perhaps, a voluntary code amongst themselves. We know that there is peer pressure there. If a number of students in a class have the mobile phone, the rest of them will also want them so that is an entire class buy-in. That is what we are doing on the primary school side.

The Chair is correct on the post-primary level, as different schools to different things. Some of them use the pouch and so on. They have the autonomy to draw up their own guidelines here but, again, we are suggesting to them that resources are provided by the Department. These are everything from webwise.ieto different groups and organisations and the safe use of the Internet is part of our programmes now. We will continue to work with schools in that space but there is a significant opportunity for schools to provide support. Equally, there is also is a significant opportunity for parents and families to support that work. We are looking to roll out information sessions for parents through our education centres. Some of those have started, I believe, in some counties. In Deputy Crowe's county of Clare, its education centre has already rolled out an information meeting for parents around the whole smartphone issue. I believe there has been one in my own constituency also and these will be rolled out across the country.

It is very important. The final thing to say is that the anti-bullying centre in DCU, is also being funded under the cineáltas anti-bullying initiative to look at the impact of smartphone restrictions on bullying behaviour. In other words, this will be an important body of work where it will look to see if there are opportunities for bullying to be reduced if access to smart phones is reduced. That is currently being rolled out with the co-operation of DCU.

We are therefore really active in the space and we want to move it on. We need everybody to sign up to it. As I said, the committee has done a lot of work on this as well.