Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Warfield for his remarks. I am taking this matter on behalf of the Minister for Education and Skills, who cannot be here this morning. I thank the Senator for providing this opportunity to outline to the House the position on the teaching of the LGBT+ aspects of the social, personal and health education, SPHE, and the relationships and sexuality education, RSE, curriculums in schools. As the Senator is aware, A Programme for a Partnership Government, which was agreed in 2016, included the following commitment, "We will develop an LGBT Youth Strategy that will encompass education, youth services, mental health and other issues."

The Minister for Children and Youth Affairs has established an oversight committee to develop proposals for such a strategy. The oversight committee has an independent chair, the journalist Una Mullally. The Department of Education and Skills is among the Departments and agencies represented on the oversight committee. Civil society and relevant stakeholders are also represented on the committee. I understand the oversight committee has held a number of meetings. It has also conducted a series of public consultation events and last month held a more focused stakeholder consultation in Farmleigh House.

The LGBT youth strategy will come under the overall policy framework of Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures, the Government's national policy framework for children and young people. As the Senator no doubt knows, Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures identifies the achievement of full potential in all areas of learning and development as a key outcome under the framework. This outcome will also be an important strand of any recommendation arising from the work of the oversight committee on the LGBTI+ youth strategy.

Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures recognises the centrality of education and learning in the lives of children and young people. However, it also recognises that learning extends beyond formal schooling and encompasses the range of experiences and learning processes that enable children and young people to develop. A key element of the work in schools on working with LGBTI+ students arises from the national action plan on bullying. The Programme for Government 2011-2016 included a commitment "to encourage schools to develop anti-bullying policies and in particular, strategies to combat homophobic bullying to support students".

In May 2012, the Minister for Education and Skills and the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs jointly hosted a forum to explore ways to tackle the problem of bullying, including identity-based bullying, such as homophobic bullying and racist bullying, in schools. Following this, the Minister for Education and Skills established a working group on tackling bullying in schools. The working group included representatives from relevant Departments and agencies, along with representatives of civil society. It produced the action plan on bullying, which was launched in January 2013. The actions contained in the action plan focus on supporting schools, education and training, research and awareness raising, with the aim of ensuring that all forms of bullying are addressed.

Implementation of the action plan is ongoing, and as part of the implementation of the recommendations included in the action plan, national anti-bullying procedures for all schools were published in September 2013. These procedures require that the prevention of bullying must be an integral part of a school's anti-bullying policy. The education and prevention strategies that the school will implement must be documented in the anti-bullying policy and must explicitly deal with the issue of identity-based bullying including, in particular, homophobic and transphobic bullying.

The Department of Education and Skills supports anti-bullying initiatives aimed at young people, such as the Stand Up! campaign against homophobic and transphobic bullying, organised by BeLonG To, the national youth service for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people in Ireland. Last November, the Minister for Education and Skills launched Stand Up! 2016, and a number of post-primary schools across the country participated in the campaign for the week.