David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Acting Chairman, Senator Quinn, could be taken as a prime example of somebody who does not bully and is very gracious with other people. He was scheduled to be next to speak and could very easily have made an arrangement with the previous Acting Chairman to stay in the Chair, but he very graciously yielded to me and that is an example of the kind of courtesy that negates bullying. There seems to be a great decline in the levels of courtesy and respect one human being shows to another. It is throughout society and there is considerable hypocrisy around it.

It is important that we have this debate. I am not sure we will get anything new from it. I hope we will. It seems to combine two elements, the first of which is bullying and we are all against bullying. It is easy enough for everybody to be against bullying. The second is something that is sometimes the result of bullying, which is suicide. I tried to amend this motion, not, I hope, in an aggressive or unpleasant manner, but because I would have liked to query why the Government has not yet appointed a director of the National Office of Suicide Prevention, an issue I would like the Minister to take back to the Cabinet. If we are serious about this and not just grandstanding, these are the kinds of things we need to do. That office has been left vacant for the past year and I know other colleagues have brought this to the attention of the House, as I have. As I said, I wanted to amend the motion but the amendment was ruled out of order.

We need to look at the whole basis of society. Things have changed, to a certain extent for the better. In the old days children were not listened to. If they went home and told a parent or guardian that they had been slapped in school by a teacher or that they had been clouted in the playground, they might well have received another clout from the parent who might have said: "You probably deserved it, you little brat." Things have changed completely. When I was in boarding school the poor little creature next to me, who came from a broken family, wet the bed. His nose was rubbed in it before all the rest of the boys in the dormitory and he was shamed. He ran away and was killed by a car crossing the road. I have been a witness to bullying, which was endemic in the boarding school I attended. There is, of course, physical violence. Coincidentally, tomorrow I will launch a novel by a talented young writer, Oran Ryan. I have just finished reading it and although I thought it was going to be a pretty ghastly book, it turned out to be a very subtle book, revolving entirely around the devastating impact of bullying on a child in a school for gifted children.

I am very glad Senator Eamonn Coghlan raised the question of homophobic bullying. It is terribly important that somebody who is an icon in the sporting world and a kind of epitome of masculinity should raise this subject, even in a brief manner. I am glad that Senator Power referred to BeLonG To, a wonderful group that has stood against homophobic bullying. However, it still continues, particularly in schools. It is the most consistent element in bullying.

I said I felt that bullying was ingrained in our culture. I also attended the meeting at which Mr. Pugsley spoke. While he was speaking, a succession of photographs were displayed. They showed an attractive girl with what seemed to be a lovely boyfriend, a sporting trophy and all sorts of things that bespoke the positive life. I wondered who she was. It was Ciara Pugsley. The photographs gave no indication that she was in such distress. It is important to find out. How does one know? How does one open oneself to somebody who is being bullied?

Last year I met a large number of groups and individuals who were involved in the area of suicide prevention. I am sure the Minister will know them. They largely sprang up organically from the experience of suicide, often of a person who was bullied. If it has not been done, it would be very useful to include those groups that sprang up organically because they have the direct experience. They did not come to it from a theoretical point of view. They came to it because they had the agonising experience of suffering this situation.

Obviously we need to look at the area of mental health and suicide. This was challenged by one of our colleagues from the Lower House who did not believe it had anything to do with mental health, but of course it has. The whole point of bullying is to create "dis-ease", disease, in the object of the bullying, and to upset, humiliate and degrade him or her and make him or her feel inferior. There is a fair amount of hypocrisy because there is also bullying in political life. It lives on bullying. Some people in this House spend their time twiddling around on those telephones or whatever they are, tweeting, or whatever they call it, negative comments about their colleagues. Why do they not blather about bullying? Let us be consistent and not just grandstand all the time.

Bullying is endemic in society. There is a whole cultural endorsement and engagement in bullying, and people love it. There is a huge audience appeal in bullying and that is why we have "I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here!" I have only occasionally seen it, but they make them eat insects and worms. That is why they have the awful "X-Factor" where they humiliate people who have absolutely no talent. That is why people watch it. It is disgusting.

The Minister will know this, but he deals very effectively and well with it. The media are one of the biggest bullies. People of no distinction and complete banality take on Cabinet Ministers from all parties who have the responsibility on their shoulders of making decisions, and they attempt to grind them into submission. Let us look at the whole culture.

I used to watch a wrestling programme moderated by Kent Walton of Granada Television in Manchester. It was great fun and everybody enjoyed it. Now we have World Wrestling Federation where they cheat and injure each other. It is a real endorsement of bullying. On a political level, what about the drones? What are our friends, the Americans, doing with their mechanical instruments of death up in the sky that kill people who are not even associated with al-Qaeda in addition to occasionally getting a target they would regard as appropriate?