Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 21 October 2015
100. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the extent to which support remains readily available and accessible to young victims of bullying in the workplace or other areas outside of the education system; if young persons have sufficiently ready access to help with particular reference to cyber and text bullying; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36771/15]
View answerA 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: Report of the Anti-Bullying Working Group to the Minister for Education and Skills was published in January 2013. It clearly recognised the necessity to tackle this issue in a holistic way and though it saw schools as pivotal, it placed the issue within a much wider social context. Cyberbullying is just one aspect of bullying, but one that given the rapid expansion of access to technology by young people has come much more sharply into focus.
It is important for parents to recognise that they need to talk to children about bullying whether it is through social media or not. Data gathered from nine year old children as part of Growing Up in Ireland, the National Longitudinal Survey commissioned by my Department, showed that based on responses from their mothers, 24% of them thought that children had been victims of bullying in the past year. This represents a significantly lower proportion than that reported by children themselves, which was reported at 40%, suggesting either that many parents are unaware that their child has experienced bullying in the previous year, or that they may have different perspectives about what constitutes bullying.
Schools are strengthening collaboration and interaction with youth services who engage with young people outside of the school setting, and promote the active participation by pupils in youth focused services within their local communities. DCYA funds the National Youth Health Programme which is run 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.
Work has been taking place 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.
The Minister of Communications established an Internet Content Governance Advisory Group under the chair of Dr. Brian O’Neil in 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 2014 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
The Office for Internet Safety is an Executive Office of the Department of Justice and Equality and has been established by the Government to take a lead responsibility for internet safety in Ireland, particularly as it relates to children. As part of its work it holds an annual Safer Internet Day, which has included a rollout of a social marketing campaign specifically targeted at young people.
