Deirdre Clune (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We might add the teaching of maths to that as the report was not very complimentary of those standards either.

I welcome the decision by the Government to have a referendum in 2015 on marriage equality. That is at least 15 months away, but the time lag is important and crucial to the success of that campaign will be the publication and the enacting of the Family Relationships and Children Bill 2013. That will go a long way towards changing the tone of the referendum when the campaign takes place.

This morning the Taoiseach is launching a report by McAfee, the Internet security company, on Internet safety for children and young people. While we do not know the full details of the survey yet, some of it has come out this morning in the media. One of the comments was that much more needs to be done in terms of educating our young people on over-sharing on the internet. This is about cyberbullying and cybersecurity, but it is also about how to behave on-line. Much is being done in our schools. The Minister is doing much in that area to incorporate the issue into the teaching of RSE and SPHE in our schools. Whether that is a success and what more can and should be done should be part of a debate in this House, in order to keep the issue to the fore at all times. Parents are probably not as Internet savvy as children and certainly not aware of the full extent of what is going on. It is a very important issue. Clearly much damage has been done to young people and much of it will be permanent. There is an issue about how to behave online and how to respect others as well as oneself. That is an important that we could and should have again.