Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

While the Minister for Education and Skills and I acknowledge the best intentions and good faith of Deputy O'Brien and his colleagues in tabling this legislation, the Government will be opposing this Bill for reasons that I will outline in due course. I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this important debate on bullying and I would like to apologise on the Minister, Deputy Quinn's behalf for his unavoidable lack of availability for this debate.

We all know that bullying can ruin a young person's enjoyment of some of the most important years of his or her life. In extreme situations, it can also tragically be a factor in a young person taking his or her own life. Given the severe consequences that bullying can have, it is important that, as a society, we take every opportunity to raise awareness about this issue and send a clear message that no form or type of bullying is acceptable anywhere at any time.

The specific commitment in the programme for Government to help schools tackle bullying, particularly homophobic bullying, underlines this Government's commitment to addressing the issue. It was with this in mind that the Minister, Deputy Quinn, along with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Fitzgerald, convened a forum on anti-bullying on 17 May last year. Remarkably, this was the first time that the Department of Education and Skills, together with the newly established Department of Children and Youth Affairs, had hosted a dedicated forum on this issue.

The event, which coincided with International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, provided an opportunity to bring together a range of stakeholders to consider what changes to existing policies and practices in schools might be necessary to tackle bullying effectively. We also wanted to identify practical steps and recommendations that could be taken to improve how schools approached and tackled bullying.

A wide range of expertise and experiences were shared on the day and more than 100 stakeholders attended, including experts in the field of bullying, support groups for victims of bullying, representatives from the schools sector and NGOs, such as the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network, GLEN, and BeLonG To Youth Services, whose presence this evening has been acknowledged.

The range of perspectives and ideas presented on the day demonstrated that this is a complex and challenging issue, one to which there is no quick fix. There are many facets to bullying behaviour. For example, modern technology is constantly providing new and more pervasive mechanisms that can further enable this type of unacceptable behaviour. The use of technology can enable bullying to take place at any time of the night or day and can often mean that the child or young person's home is no longer a safe haven, as the Members opposite outlined.

Alongside the forum, the Minister, Deputy Quinn, established a working group to consider how best to tackle all forms and types of bullying in schools. On the day of the forum, he issued a call for submissions from all interested parties and stakeholders. He invited students, teachers, parents and all other interested parties to submit their views on this topic so that the working group could take full account of all of the issues and viewpoints involved. It is a measure of the concern about bullying that 67 submissions have been received from the education partners, representative groups, experts and individuals. The working group has considered these submissions, along with the outcomes and recommendations from the forum.

During the past few months, the group has also been consulting with a range of stakeholders as well as with colleagues in Scotland and England. The group has finalised an action plan recommending further measures that can be taken to tackle bullying in schools effectively. I am happy to announce in the Chamber that the Minister, Deputy Quinn, will launch the action plan later this week.

The group's work has confirmed that a key element in preventing bullying in schools is the presence of a positive, inclusive school culture where everyone in the school community understands what bullying is and its impact on those involved. Effective strategies for preventing and tackling bullying are based on a whole-school community approach. Research shows that anti-bullying policies and practices work best where the entire school community, including school management authorities, staff, students and parents, play their part and are resolute in maintaining a climate of respect for all. It is clear that the curriculum is an important tool in helping children and young people to develop positive attitudes and in allowing them to develop their knowledge, understanding and respect for diversity, as well as strategies to protect themselves from bullying.

Instilling respect for diversity in our children and young people is also a major issuing in tackling prejudiced-based bullying, including homophobic bullying. Unfortunately, research tells us that homophobic bullying is widespread in schools. Research also shows that LGBT young people are at a higher risk of bullying and that this form of bullying is one of the least challenged in our schools. For this reason, there is a specific commitment in the programme for Government to address the serious issue of homophobic bullying in our schools.

The Ombudsman for Children published a report on bullying late last year. The report is based on consultations with more than 300 children and young people from the ages of ten years to 17 years. It provides a helpful insight into how young people believe bullying should be addressed. It emphasises the view that children and young people should be involved in the development of their schools' anti-bullying policies. Such policies should be written in language and formats that are appropriate to students' ages and abilities and also in ways that are interesting and engaging so that children will pay attention to the messages and information being communicated to them.

The Bill before the House is flawed for a number of reasons, notwithstanding the good intentions of its proponents and sponsors. The approach taken whereby one individual is tasked with responsibility for implementation of the school bullying measures is entirely inconsistent with international and national best practice relating to the prevention of and intervention in bullying incidents in schools. It is widely accepted that a whole-school and community-based approach is essential to underpinning effective counter-bullying measures in schools.

The Bill places a significant and impossible reliance on just one individual member of the school board of management, who would be legally solely responsible for a range of functions, including the overall implementation of the school's anti-bullying procedures. This is contrary to the principle of corporate governance to which all boards of management are required to adhere and to the significant body of research that says that all members of the school community must be involved and responsible for dealing with bullying in schools. There is also a grave and genuine risk that placing legal responsibility solely on one person in this way might be seen as absolving other members of the board, staff and school community from dealing with this critical issue, even where the best intentions attend on such a measure. Schools must have appropriate intervention strategies in place to respond to incidents of bullying. Having one member of the board of management responsible for this does not and will not underpin a whole-school community approach.

The requirements of the Bill to hold a board meeting and notify parents within days of each reported incident is also unworkable and potentially counter-productive. The consequence of such a requirement would be considerable bureaucracy, at the very least, involving multiple board meetings - weekly or perhaps even daily - a significant amount of paperwork and the potential for legal challenge in the event that the stringent requirements were not adequately met.

We do not want schools to become so focused on meeting legal requirements and timelines that the real focus of addressing the bullying incident or behaviour in an effective and appropriate manner is actually diminished. For the same reason, the Government is not in favour of the reporting requirements suggested by the Deputy in this Bill.

Any attempt to implement these proposals in their current form would cause unnecessary difficulties in schools and would be unworkable. They could also be counter-productive. The mandatory reporting to parents suggested by the Deputy might also cause particular difficulties for some young people. I refer in particular to young people subjected to homophobic bullying. Young people who are, or are perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, LGBT, may not feel comfortable discussing their sexuality with their parents and may not wish the perceived reasons for bullying to be made known in that way.

If a young person feels that his or her family might not be supportive, regrettably, he or she might feel particularly vulnerable if the school is required to report the circumstances of bullying to the parents. That particular risk has been acknowledged for instance in the state of Massachusetts, where mandatory reporting was introduced as part of a legislative response in 2010. Specific guidance was issued by authorities there on notifying parents when students are bullied based on sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. In addition, research shows that it is most important in responding to incidents of bullying that the child or young person affected is consulted and is involved in devising an appropriate response.

Turning to the issue of the national guidelines on bullying policies, there is widespread agreement that the Department's guidelines on countering bullying in schools must be updated. Deputy O'Brien raised the issue, which I accept is a fair point. While the guidelines can be adapted by schools to meet their particular needs and most of the content remains valid, the fact that they were issued in 1993 means that their revision is long overdue. The definition of bullying must be updated. I am aware that the working group is making recommendations in that regard.

A number of interdepartmental initiatives are in train which are related to bullying and must be considered in revising the bullying guidelines. That includes the development of the Emotional Health and Well-being: Guidelines for Post-Primary Schools, which the Minister, Deputy Quinn, intends to publish in the near future. As Deputy O'Brien correctly stated, nor do the existing guidelines make any reference to cyberbullying, given that they were produced in 1993. While the guidelines themselves require to be revisited, and will be, it does not follow and the Minister does not support the provision in Deputy O'Brien's Bill to turn the existing guidelines into regulations at this time. That would not be appropriate. It would be preferable to focus our energies on updating the existing guidelines in consultation with the education partners.

Deputy O'Brien might also note, that while statutory underpinning of the current guidelines is somewhat indirect, there is nevertheless some statutory support and endorsement for them. All schools are required, under the Education (Welfare) Act 2000, to have a code of behaviour which has been drawn up in accordance with the guidelines of the National Educational Welfare Board, NEWB. The NEWB guidelines make it clear that each school must have policies to prevent or address bullying and harassment, and schools must make clear in their code of behaviour that bullying is unacceptable. Legislation is already in place to ensure that schools have anti-bullying policies. We must now proceed to update the Department's anti-bullying guidelines to make sure they fully meet the needs of modern schools, and provide up-to-date guidance for schools on how best to develop and implement anti-bullying policies and procedures at individual school level.

I also wish to highlight the fact that this is not just a school problem: although it does exist in schools, it is not confined to the school environment. Not all bullying behaviour takes place in the physical school environment itself. Bullying behaviour can occur wherever children and young people gather, including in the home, as Deputies have pointed out, and in wider family and social groups such as youth clubs and during sporting and recreational activities.

It is clear that parents and wider society have an important role to play in preventing and tackling bullying. The bullying behaviour that is taking place in schools, and the prejudices that underpin some of the bullying, is learnt and copied from what children and young people hear and see in their everyday lives. That includes in the home, in the community and through the media. Therefore, we all have a responsibility, right across the community, to model the type of respectful behaviour that we would wish to see in children and young people.

It is clear that schools, parents, Government, civil society, industry and children and young people themselves, must play their part in preventing and tackling bullying. The Minister, Deputy Quinn, will launch the action plan on bullying later this week and he will outline his full response to the proposals of the working group at that time. The Minister looks forward to working with the education partners and other stakeholders to reinvigorate and strengthen the approach to preventing and tackling bullying.

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