Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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532. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the extent to which out of school bullying has been brought to the attention of her Department with particular reference to incidents of self-harm caused by such bullying; if adequate measures are currently in place or likely to be put in place to address these issues; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [33842/16]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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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. Prevalence rates based on information provided by the child’s mother were substantially lower than rates based on children’s reports, with 23% of the mothers of nine year- olds reporting that their child had been victimised in the previous year.

Many mothers were unaware of their children’s experiences of bullying. For the children who did report victimisation in the previous year, only 39% of their mothers appeared to have been aware that their child had been the victim of bullying. This emphasises the importance of parents talking to their children about bullying and schools having policies on bullying which are disseminated to parents

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. Amongst the actions which will be taken are the development of a national anti-bullying website 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.

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, and includes programmes aimed at exploring bullying and cyberbullying with young people.