Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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365. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the extent to which his Department continues to address issues of bullying among teenagers or young adults outside of the classroom; if a specific provision exists in this regard; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8282/15]

James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures: the National Policy Framework for Children has as one of it’s outcomes that children are active and healthy, and another that children are safe and protected from harm.

Bullying Data from Wave One Data Collection from the Child Cohort in Growing Up in Ireland (at age nine) revealed:

A total of 40% of nine-year-olds reported being victims of bullying in the past year, and boys and girls experienced similar rates of victimisation.

Consultation with Young People

A national consultation was conducted with children and young people during 2011 and the report, Life as a Child and Young Person in Ireland: Report of a National Consultation, was published in 2012. Bullying and peer pressure emerged in the top eight 'not good' things for both children (aged 7-12) and young people (aged 12-18).

The Action Plan on Bullying

The Action Plan On Bullying: Report of the Anti-Bullying Working Group to the Minister for Education and Skills was published in January 2013 clearly recognised the necessity to tackle this issue in a holistic way which saw schools as pivotal but placed the issue within a much wider social context. One of the recommendations was that a single national anti-bullying website is to be developed to provide information for parents, young people, youth workers, sporting and cultural associations and school staff on types and methods of bullying and how to deal with bullying behaviour. This is now being considered as part of the implementation plan for Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures.

Cyberbullying

The Minister of Communications established an Internet Content Governance Advisory Group under the chair of Dr. Brian O’Neil in December 2013 to ensure our national policy represents best practice in offering the same online protections to our citizens as those available in the offline world.

The Group’s report was approved by Cabinet and published in May 2104 and makes several recommendations aimed at protecting children and young people without unduly limiting their opportunities and rights online. Along with changes to institutional, administrative and legal structures, the report makes four specific recommendations on cyberbullying aimed at providing stronger supports for tackling this issue through primary and post-primary curricula, and additional training and awareness measures.

In Ireland Safer Internet Day is promoted by the PDST Technology in Education and Webwise.ie. It is also strongly supported by the Safer Internet Ireland Project. This was held earlier in February with the theme "Let's create a better internet together".

Work with Youth services

Schools are strengthening collaboration and interaction with youth services and promote the active participation by pupils in youth focused services within their local communities. DCYA supports the National Youth Health Programme which is in partnership with the HSE and the National Youth Council of Ireland. The programme's aims are to provide a broad-based, flexible health promotion/education support and training service to youth organisations and to all those working with young people in out-of-school settings.

Work with Primary Care Teams

Work is currently under way with primary care teams in the HSE to pilot 'social prescribing' Social prescribing creates a formal means of enabling primary care services to refer young people with social, emotional or practical needs which include experience of being bullied or showing bullying behaviour to a variety of holistic, local non-clinical services.