Dr. Niall Muldoon:

I thank the committee for the invitation to meet with the young people. It has also been a great honour for me just to listen to them. I thank my team, Ms McKenna, Ms Kiernan and Ms Kelly, who helped prepare the young people, but the young people know what they are at. They are not afraid. They have done the research and the work, met with each other and considered the questions put to them. I have listened to some of the stuff brought up by different people. We talked about racism at a deep level, and of real examples of it. We have talked about microaggressions and explained those. There are teachers out there who are being racist. They might not intend it, but we have to stop that. Ignorance is not an excuse for it. We need to change that direction. We have talked about the need for more than just anti-racism policies. Young people are aware of racism, sexism, body shaming, sexuality, religion and all of that unkindness. We need to change that within our education system as well and to move forward on those.

We also talked about whether schools are listening to the answers these young people are putting forward, and they are not. Schools are not listening as much as they should do. One thing I have been positive about pushing forward is the concept of the parent-student charter, which is supposed to come into education. It will now probably be called the community charter, which will allow children, parents and all school staff to talk together and create a charter within the school. Children and young people can decide what emphases they want the school to take and get a report every year on whether it is going in the direction they want. It will make a difference when we can hear from the children on a regular basis and not just on a tokenistic one. Those sorts of things will hopefully start to happen.

The young people were also very real about the sensitivities of sexuality and comments from teachers, and the one strike and you are out approach. Some teachers have more than five strikes with those sorts of comments. With peers too, sexual and relationship education needs to be more real and to start earlier. We need to move into a situation where children are being taught in appropriate language from the earliest possible age. We are starting the legislation for that. That legislation has to be enacted and followed through in a way that schools cannot opt out of it. It is an important move forward. Hearing about children on boards of management within ETBs is a great step forward as well.

The young people talked about misogyny and sexism. Senator Clonan was right. Last year's results from the CSO showed that 68% of women between the ages of 18 and 24 have experienced sexual harassment and some sort of sexual assault in their life. The term "in their life" is used but they are only 24 years old. It is not even a lifetime. That is almost 70%, which is a huge number. With men the number is lower, but it is happening so we cannot leave consent discussions until the age of 15, 16 or 17.

Even I am shocked that so many people have phones before the age of ten. If your phone is your main form of interaction, then consent needs to be talked about before you get your phone, at whatever age that is, so it needs to start in primary school. As the Senator said, consent is about everything you do in life. It is about having a cup of coffee or a different piece of food or borrowing clothes. It then broadens out into relationships and sexuality.

I think the young people have everything nailed down. We need to listen to them. This committee has shown great foresight in bringing them in, and I again thank it for that. It is appreciated.