Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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330. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the total number of incidents of school bullying including cyber bullying reported to his Department through the primary and-or post-primary sectors in each of the past three years to date; the extent to which it has been found possible to address the issue to date; his plans for the future; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9696/14]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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In January 2013, my colleague, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, and I published the Action Plan on Bullying. Since then, good progress has been made on implementing actions designed to help prevent and tackle bullying in primary and second level schools. These actions focus on support for schools, teacher training, research and awareness raising and aim to ensure that all forms of bullying, including cyber bullying, are addressed.

New National Procedures on Anti-Bullying, which include a specific reference to cyberbullying, were launched last September. These are currently being adopted and implemented by all 4,000 primary and post primary schools in the country. These are available on my Department's website www.education.ie and include reporting and oversight arrangements.

The recommended approach is for schools to aim to prevent bullying in schools and, where it does happen, to take the steps required to address the issue at local level. There is no obligation on school authorities to report incidents of bullying to my Department and my Department does not collate data on individual bullying incidents. My Department has supported awareness raising initiatives in relation to tackling bullying. These include Safer Internet Day, an initiative, targeted at young people, to address internet safety issues, including cyberbullying. I was very pleased to launch Safer Internet Day 2014 in Ireland earlier this month.

Central to promoting safer use of the Internet by young people is a strong commitment to changing behaviour and raising the knowledge, skills and attitudes around preventing, responding to and reporting cyber bullying incidents. The continued implementation of the Action Plan on Bullying will increase capacity in these areas and build on my Department's current strategy to ensure that internet safety is mainstreamed throughout schools' teaching, learning and other practices. Resources are available on www.webwise.ie and include guidelines on developing Acceptable Use Policies.

My Department also supported the Stand Up! Awareness Week Against Homophobic and Transphobic Bullying in second level schools which took place in 2013 and will again support this initiative in March 2014.

An Anti-Bullying Parent Training Programme was run jointly by the National Parents Councils (primary and post primary) in 2013. Funding of €60,000 was grant aided for this purpose and 105 anti-bullying parent training sessions were delivered to 3279 participants around the country in 2013. The sessions were designed to support parents and their children with issues of bullying and to inform them about the new Anti-bullying procedures for schools. Implementation of these and other actions identified in the Plan will continue in 2014.