Katherine Zappone (Independent)

I welcome the Minister. I am heartened by his determination to grasp the nettle on the many aspects of the education system where change is required. Not least of these is his commitment to increasing pluralism in the patronage of schools, which has a significant bearing on this debate. It is encouraging to see a Minister so engaged and willing to listen.

I wholeheartedly support the motion, not only as an Independent Senator but also as an educator. As I do not have children I was unable to undertake the type of research done by certain colleagues, but I can draw upon my experience of teaching young people for several years in New York city. One of the subjects I taught was religion. Most days the students were somewhat engaged, but the school on Fifth Avenue had large windows and they were often distracted by what was happening outside. In order to bring their attention back, particularly during teaching religion, I often repeated a phrase delivered by Bette Midler - one of my great heroes - from the movie "The Rose", about the life of Janis Joplin, "Drugs, sex, rock n' roll". This shows how long ago that was. That got them back. The heart of our motion is about young people and particularly what they want. They have identified a serious gap in the educational experience which, if filled, could contribute towards a significant move towards positive mental health for themselves, their friends and their fellow students. They want the education system to provide them with more opportunities to learn, discuss, share, debate and talk about stories about their relationships, sexuality, family, friendship, positive and negative feelings about who they are, who they want their friends to be, how they want to be intimate, how they can push through the dark times of adolescence and how they can discover and celebrate what it means to be human and to be human together. We think and they think that one of the ways to do this is to experience a high-quality social, personal and health education programme and relationships and sexuality education more often than they do now. They think and we think that it would contribute more significantly to their positive mental health.

Why is this motion so important other than the fact that we think our young people are calling for it? Should that be reason enough? Many Senators have been drawing on research, their experiences and the experience of their children. Senator Power referred to the suicide rate. We do not want to have a high suicide rate but Ireland has a high rate compared to Europe. Senator Mac Conghail referred to research by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency to examine the potential effects of a lack of comprehensive implementation of these programmes. The lack of comprehensive implementation means our young people have a lack of knowledge about these matters and a lack of opportunities to discuss these issues. Issues related to this lack of discussion increase as a result of the lack of comprehensive implementation of this programme.

The Minister is probably aware of the specific research on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people, particularly as it relates to their mental health and well-being. In light of the research, particularly by Dr. Mayock in 2009, a picture emerged of the most vulnerable people within the minority of sexual identity. On average, they realised they were lesbian, gay, transgendered or bisexual at 14 years of age. My awareness came a bit earlier than that and, thankfully as a result of that, it did not lead to what this research points to. Many of them commenced self-harming behaviour at 15 and a half years of age and attempted suicide for the first time at 17 years. Many of them did not come out until 21 years of age. For these participants, the seven years of concealing sexual or gender identity often coincided with mental health difficulties and vulnerabilities. The research recommends much of what we have suggested today, that there should be more social, personal and health education programme and relationships and sexuality education but particularly for this population. It should provide for greater scope of the exploration of minority sexuality and gender identity and not just in social, personal and health education programme and relationships and sexuality education so that those minority sexual identities infuse the school curriculum and contribute to the health and well-being of those people.

BeLonGTo, GLEN and the social, personal and health education programme support service have developed a resource on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identities for use in relationships and sexuality education at both senior and junior cycle and the Department is supporting it. It is ready to be rolled out in September 2011 but this will merely be a resource for teachers, should they wish to use it as part of the relationships and sexuality education programme.

I had some conversations recently with representatives of the ASTI convener of the social, personal and health education programme committee. Second level teachers are very keen to support the teaching of social, personal and health education programme at senior cycle even though there is no obligation to teach it. They are aware that best practice in this area dictates that they receive training to do this, as referred to by other Senators, particularly in learning methodologies for group work. To be effective, some of those groups need to be somewhat smaller.

Young people want it, the research supports it and teachers are standing by to support it. Now is the time to take practical steps to tackle the barriers outlined by Senator McAleese in proposing this motion in order to get Ireland back on track towards promoting positive mental health for young people.