Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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My Department published Cineáltas: Action Plan on Bullying in December 2022, which is dedicated to the prevention and addressing of bullying, cyber bullying, racist bullying, gender identity bullying or sexual harassment, among other areas, in schools.

Cineáltas is centred on a child right’s based approach and provides a collective vision and clear roadmap for how the whole education community and society can work together to prevent and address bullying in our schools.

The Implementation Plan for Cineáltas which was published in April last year commits to implementing each of 61 actions within a five-year period.

A number of actions in Cineáltas have already been implemented. One of the key actions in Cineáltas is to update the anti-bullying procedures for schools. This work is well advanced with Bí Cineálta, procedures for preventing and addressing bullying behaviour in primary and post primary schools, due to be published in the coming weeks. The updated procedures will provide for schools to record all incidents of bullying behaviour including information on the types of bullying behaviour.

Cineáltas also contains an action regarding the development of a national database to facilitate data being collated in an anonymised manner to facilitate the development of an annual national report on bullying in schools. The Department has also commenced work to update the Being LGBT in School Resource.