Mayo TD calls for 'a whole-community approach' to tackling bullying

A Mayo TD has stated she cannot see any other way to tackling bullying meaningfully except through a whole-community approach.

Speaking during an Oireachtas Committee debate on school bullying and its impact on mental health, Deputy Rose Conway Walsh said the approach must include An Garda Siochána, the GAA, soccer clubs, clinicians, teachers, students as well as others.

She elaborated: "Now we have a huge amount of information internationally and nationally.

"We have the evidence-based models. It is time to look at how we bring all this forward.

"I commend the schools which implement good anti-bullying policies.

"There are good practices out there and I know of them even in my own area.

"But we need to encourage the schools which are not participating.

"I would not send my child to a school where the board of management or the teachers said bullying did not happen there.

"We know that where there are human beings, there is the potential to be bullied and for bullying behaviour.

"It is about how we deal with it. We have models of good practice there to deal with it."

The committee was told by Dr. Niall Muldoon that since 2018 the Office of the Ombudsman for Children has received more than 400 complaints about bullying in schools, both at primary and post-primary level.

"These comprise 10% of all complaints that we have received in that time. In the context of our broad remit and the endless variety of complaints that we receive, that is quite significant."

In her reaction, the Mayo TD said: "We have to ask why?

"We must assume there is a gravity to those cases and that all other procedures have been gone through in trying to deal with them.

"That is a failure of the system. That is 400 failures about which we know.

"We also know that the majority of children suffer in silence and damage is being done.

"I would like to know what sanctions are in place if an anti-bullying policy is not implemented in a school?

"I use the word "sanctions" in the wider sense of the word," she added.