Mr. Richard Bell:

From our point of view, we see it as being a total, systematic approach. It has to be. There is no question that most of what is occurring occurs outside of the school. Although I am not sure if this is the case in all schools, mobile phones are banned in my school, so that is not the problem. The problem is at home. In the CyberSafeKids document, "A Life Behind the Screens: Uncovering the Realities of Digital Childhood", it was reported that apparently 42% of kids did not speak to anybody about online things that worry them. This is occurring at home, outside of school.

Obviously, schools are the interface with students and there is a responsibility there, but here is the problem. Six months ago nobody was talking about Grok; it has been in every single newspaper constantly in the past couple of weeks. Before that the big issue was ChatGPT and its dangers for education and so on. The problem is, what happens when we deal with Grok? We deal with that and in six months' time it will be something completely different. I go back to Roblox. There was a huge thing done on RTÉ about that subject. The problem is that it is a little like the Golden Gate Bridge: once you have painted it you have to paint it again. How then do we stay on top of this? The answer to that, in my view, is that there are two ways to do it. One is that we are constantly updating training, but schools are completely filled with initiatives. If it is not technology, it is drugs. We are inundated. Mr. Duffy stated that when society scratches, schools itch. I do not know how we could do that. Perhaps there is scope for the introduction of groups, as was offered, that would come into schools and would be constantly on a super high level of knowledge and be able to deal with these things. That could be updated constantly and they could move around. If we are to be serious about this, it will take investment. To be fair, you cannot defend yourself from missiles with a bow and arrow, and that is largely my fear of what will happen. We now need specialised people available to schools who are constantly going around dealing with that. That is my view.