Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I do not mean the obvious consequences of teenage pregnancies or the risk of sexually transmitted infections, which have reached epidemic proportions in the past five years. Gonorrhoea, syphilis and chlamydia have increased by 900%, 1,100% and 1,500% respectively. Rather, I mean the more subtle and sinister damage caused where sex is callous and commodified, relationships are transitory and our children are deprived of any sense of intimacy, tenderness, responsibility or innocence.

As a society, this is a conversation we must have. We could do with a radical reconsideration of what is acceptable and desirable behaviour by parents, children and the Government. Ultimately, it takes not just parents but society itself to rear a child. In a well-functioning society, there is no such thing as other people's children. All of them are ours, but we have lost touch with this view in the past ten years. We must reconnect with it again.

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