Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome to the House. As one would expect, Sinn Féin welcomes the findings and recommendations of this report on relationships and sexual education. It has been 20 years since the curriculum was last updated. We have heard time and time again from students, staff, parents and stakeholders that the RSE curriculum is woefully outdated and that provision of sexual education is inconsistent, unvalued in many circumstances and undermined by the lack of priority given to it by schools, the Department and the infrastructure we have in place in this State.

We all know what must be done. Our children deserve the best relationship and sexual education with which we can equip them. The Department has been remiss and negligent in its duties in updating key information, allowing the curriculum to become increasingly out of date as the years went by. We are therefore concerned that many key recommendations from this report and the review conducted by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA, will go unheeded. It is imperative that the State implements and enforces every recommendation made by the committee. There is ample talk of guidelines and little talk of rules. We must guarantee consistency and accuracy in the information provided to students and the provision of RSE across the nation. It is apparent from the NCCA's review that RSE is being delivered, in their words, with "considerable variation across schools in terms of what is being taught, how it is taught, who teaches it and the time allocated to it".

We must, with no hesitancy, pursue the uniformity of relationship and sexual education. We must ensure that the curriculum is up to date, scientifically accurate, not weighted down by superstition, and taught professionally, by professionals, with ample time allocated for it. It was a key recommendation by the Committee on the Eighth Amendment, of which I was a member, that relationship and sexual education be overhauled comprehensively and that it be delivered with consistency and accuracy regardless of ethos. Everyone is entitled to their own religion, but not their own facts. It is therefore of great importance that the Minister and Department, with great courage and self-confidence, pursue the immediate renovation of relationship and sexual education across this State. This will involve challenging powerful vested conservative interests and enforcing rules, not recommending guidelines. It will also involve ensuring that every principal and board of management know their duties and that schools are adequately resourced for the successful provision of a new RSE programme. We know that conservative principals in schools are an active blockage in applying the current guidelines. We need rules because guidelines will not work.

In the short term, this means departmental guidance and continuing professional development for teachers, staff, and external providers. This means that the Department must make RSE one of its key priorities in the year ahead. There is no excuse for not being able to roll out a reform of RSE by the next school year. Anything less will represent a failure by this Government to take young people and their education seriously. Every child deserves the facts and a comprehensive education. This programme must be student-centred, holistic, inclusive, and age and developmentally appropriate and must not insulate students from facts. It should involve a whole-school approach and staff must be adequately prepared for this. There must be specialist training for educators. This is absolutely crucial.

In the long term, a successful reform of RSE must involve the prioritisation of reform to SPHE. RSE and SPHE must be combined into a single consistent and deliverable subject. This must be supported by broader curriculum redevelopment. Furthermore, it must be bolstered by the accreditation of SPHE at post-primary level and the development of post-graduate qualifications indicative of specialist training.

We must not forget the whole-society approach. Over the past century, RSE has been seriously undermined by a lack of fact-based education, a refusal to properly educate on the behalf of some, a negligent and lethargic Department, and a complete failure to address the democratic deficit in our education system that stems from continuing church control of much of our schooling.

I want to finish, if I may, with a quote that was brought to my attention this week from James Warren Doyle, a Roman Catholic Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin in Ireland in the 1800s. He was active in the anti-tithe movement. A campaigner for Catholic emancipation, he was also an educator, church organiser and the builder of Carlow cathedral. He said, 200 hundred years ago:

I do not see how any man wishing well to the public peace, and who looks to Ireland as his country, can think that peace can be permanently established, or the prosperity of the country ever well secured if children are separated at the commencement of life on account of their religious opinion.

Yet now, some 200 years later, the vast majority of children are still separated on the basis of religion and let us call it out, it is that continuing church dominance that has been a roadblock to progressive RSE education in this country. I hope the Minister has the courage to tackle that in the time he has remaining in his term.