Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): A warm welcome to the Committee this afternoon. We have with us Professor Siobhán O'Neill, the Northern Ireland mental health champion, and Dr Nicole Bond, who is a research officer at the office of the mental health champion. You are both welcome, and we appreciate your time.

You are invited to give evidence on the relationship and sexuality education (RSE) inquiry, and we look forward to hearing from you on that. Members may have other questions around mental health and well-being and education that they have an interest in.

We have your written briefing. I am happy to hand over to you for any initial opening remarks or presentation that you want to make. That should take up to 10 minutes, and then we will move on to questions from members and answers. We try to keep inquiries from each member to around five minutes, just to keep us on track because we have three evidence sessions this afternoon.

Over to you, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Professor Siobhán O'Neill (Mental Health Champion): OK. Super. Thanks for the opportunity to be here today. I am glad that the Committee is having the inquiry. It is a really important issue. I will make the case that all children and young people in Northern Ireland need to have good, inclusive RSE. It is a fundamental right and a mental health issue, because relationships education is mental health education. RSE also has an important function in preventing and detecting child abuse and exploitation, and violence against women and girls, both of which are causes of mental illness. That is the lens through which I look at RSE today. I am using trauma-informed practice (TIP) a bit in this too.

Healthy relationships are the foundation of good mental health. They promote emotional regulation and buffer us from the effects of stress. Just as an aside, even before I became the mental health champion, one of the things that I had always been passionate about is the idea of teaching children and young people about attachment and attachment theory. Prior to becoming a parent, everybody needs to know about the importance of attachments, the importance of the early years, the importance of attachments between caregivers and children and how vital that is for our sense of self, as a template for all our other relationships, and the impact of that on our mental health. There is so much evidence now around the importance of attachments and relationships. Therefore, relationships education should include attachment theory at GCSE level. Before anybody becomes a parent, they need to know about that. Some of it is done really well in schools, but it needs to be universal.

Anyway, back to the script. Healthy relationships should be fun. They should meet the needs of both partners. However, strong relationships require skills that do not often come naturally, particularly for young people who do not have positive experiences of relationships in their own family and do not have adults who model healthy relationships. Young people need to be shown and taught how to argue, disagree within a relationship and treat each other with respect. We can see that in peacebuilding in society. Those skills are absolutely fundamental. They are also leadership skills. You can see that the people who make really great leaders and rise to the top of organisations are those who can regulate their emotions and have really challenging conversations and navigate difficulties and come to agreement in that way. We need that in Northern Ireland, given our divided history and the difficulties that we have at the minute.

There have been many calls for mental health in the education curriculum, and education about relationships is a really vital part of that. In primary schools, it is about how to make friends, be a good friend and communicate our needs respectfully. In adolescence, RSE needs to cover romantic and sexual relationships as well as peer relationships. There is evidence that, by the age of 16, 58% of males and 55% of females are dating. They are already engaged in romantic relationships.

We did a survey that shows that relationships, arguments with friends or problems in their relationships are a source of stress and worry that impacts on mental health for nearly 40% of 16-year-olds. What we describe as "mental health education" — young people say that they want to learn about mental health — is about managing those social relationships. In the academic literature, mental health education is referred to as "social and emotional learning", and RSE refers to the social side of that.

In 2022, the economist David McDaid conducted an analysis of cost-effective measures to reduce the burden of mental illness, which, in Northern Ireland, is £3·4 billion annually. Social and emotional learning was one of only 10 recommended "best buys" of effective interventions that are really cost-effective. It is a universal intervention. For every £1 that you put into it, you get a saving of £5 in terms of the reduced risk of depression. It is social and emotional learning, which means that emotional regulation skills will be included, but the social side of it is as important as emotional regulation, which is about managing your emotions. Managing relationships is fundamental to that. The programmes that have been shown to be cost-effective and effective have been included in WHO guidelines on mental health promotion and preventative interventions for adolescents. That is RSE as mental health education.

Violence and abuse in childhood and child sexual abuse in particular are adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that carry a high risk of mental illness. We all need to be aware of the relationship between childhood adversities and mental illness. They are the biggest predictor of mental illness, even over the Troubles, the conflict and everything else. In every country, adverse childhood experiences relate to mental illness in adulthood. High-quality, inclusive RSE is a really important element of the prevention of abuse and prevention of violence against women and girls. It is also about detecting abuse and giving young people the vocabulary and the information that they need in order to work out when something is inappropriate and needs to be passed on. If adverse childhood experiences are not talked about, young people do not know what "normal" is or what it looks like — in some families.

Consent is an important element. Young people who have not had role models for healthy relationships can have difficulty navigating consent and recognising and responding to abuse and intimate partner violence in their own relationship. Consent needs to be addressed at the earliest stage, in the early years setting. Body boundaries, inappropriate touches, communicating whether you want a hug, a high five or a handshake: all of that should start in early years and continue throughout primary and secondary school.

I want to talk for a second about rejection sensitivity, because it comes up in the literature on young people's mental health. There is a particular way to measure that now. It is common in young people with ADHD. Rejection-sensitive dysphoria (RSD) is a condition. Good RSE should be about how you cope with rejection, so it should buffer young people against that as well. It is about what do you do when you are rejected in a friendship or a romantic relationship. It is about how to argue and disagree constructively. Again, it is important for children who have not been exposed to respectful "rupture and repair", which is what we call it in families. There will always be falling out, but it is about how we repair and reconnect. Young people may not have had that experience. Again, RSE — relationships education — is about that.

Over the past few years, I have learned that, while strategies are really important, the implementation of those strategies is fundamental. We need to scrutinise that to ensure that the strategies are implemented. Our strategy for tackling violence against women and girls is strong. It sets out a really important goal of changing attitudes, behaviours and social norms to tackle the root causes, and it includes a forum to coordinate work on equipping and supporting families, children and young people to enjoy healthy, respectful relationships by using the curriculum. That includes RSE. I therefore ask the Committee to look at whether that forum has been established. I do not think that there is evidence of it yet. However, it is really important. We need to know what is happening with that forum, because you have a low-cost universal intervention that fits with the strategy and needs to be implemented. It should be recognised as part of the effort that we are all making to eliminate or reduce violence against women and girls.

Let us look at current provision. It is excellent in some places, and there are examples, but it is inadequate in others. We have little data on the effectiveness of the provision generally, other than from surveys of pupils that can paint a really worrying picture. The Secondary Students' Union of Northern Ireland (SSUNI) survey found that 77% of respondents had not heard of RSE. They might have been getting it, but it had not been labelled as such. Only 22·8% had been adequately taught about consent. That is worrying.

In research conducted by Belfast Youth Forum, young people described the RSE at school as "basic", "unhelpful", "useless" and "biased". Several studies show that pupils would like to know more about LGBT+ identities and that those subjects were delivered poorly or not at all. That really matches what I hear from young people. Young people from the LGBT+ community report that RSE is not inclusive of their relationships and does not address, generally, the challenges that young people feel, regardless of their sexual orientation.

One survey reported that young people go online to find information on relationships and expectations about their role in relationships and what they do. When that happens, they are faced with a world of untrustworthy and potentially dangerous sources of information. It is really concerning to hear stories of young people learning about sex from pornography and TikTok. That should not be the case. Our children deserve better than that. They deserve the best information on how to have safe, happy, healthy relationships and to receive accurate information about issues relating to their gender and sexuality.

Last year, the former Secretary of State made age-appropriate, comprehensive and scientifically accurate education on sexual and reproductive health and rights a compulsory component of the curriculum for adolescents. That was a positive development. However, the consultation on the legislation, which provides for a parent to request to have their child excluded from RSE, was really concerning. Children and young people have a right to that education, and, when we consider the importance of education in preventing violence and abuse and promoting access to healthcare, it is not acceptable that any young person is denied that right. It is obviously vital that parents are fully involved in the design of RSE. They need to be made aware of what is discussed so that they can continue that work at home, because a lot of that education should happen in the home. However, we have to recognise that, in many homes, that will not happen. It will not be the case.

The consultation also suggests that schools should have:

Again, that violates the right of the child to that education and may limit young people's access to the factual information that they need to make informed decisions.

RSE is not a single subject. It is about embedding the education across several subjects in a way that is consistent and delivers skills and knowledge in a trauma-informed manner and in a way that supports young people's self-awareness and their own growth. It appears that some schools wish to discuss moral and ethical issues in relation to some aspects of the issues taught in RSE. Consistency is vital: young people should not be given conflicting or shaming messages about sexual health, sexuality, gender or relationships during different lessons.

Our Programme for Government (PFG) includes trauma-informed practice. It needs to be extended. We should work towards making schools trauma-aware environments and places of safety for marginalised children and young people. Being trauma-informed means that we need to consider how words and actions can leave vulnerable and marginalised children and young people feeling safe or unsafe and how classroom discussions can contribute to bullying. It is worrying that we appear to be on the verge of permitting schools or teachers to provide a moral commentary regarding issues such as gender identity, sexual orientation and family structure. Those issues are central to people's identities. That marks them out as being different from other issues, like contraception. It is about a young person's identity, and we need to be so careful. The type of commentary that we are talking about is harmful and results in children and young people feeling ashamed, stigmatised and marginalised. It harms a young person's self-esteem and mental health when their right to exist is challenged.

In order to promote well-being and, in fact, to promote peacebuilding as well, schools need to be places that celebrate diversity. They need to proactively promote inclusion, particularly for LGBT+ young people, many of whom are bullied and feel unsafe in school. There should be no place in any part of the school curriculum for debates or discussions that serve to humiliate, demean or diminish any child's rights to exist for whatever reason, and that could be race, gender, sexual orientation or disability. It is just not acceptable in trauma-informed practice.

I am nearly finished.

Sadly, misinformation regarding the content of RSE abounds. Many subscribe to the myth that RSE will result in an increase in sexual activity: of course, the opposite is true. Most young people already have access to online information, including pornography, harmful masculinity influencers and all the rest. It is all there for them. By equipping young people with communication skills and accurate information, good RSE reduces early sexual activity and unplanned pregnancy. The reality is that a high proportion of young people already engage in sexual activity. A strong, consistent RSE programme is necessary to reduce health risks and protect young people's well-being.

Thanks for your attention. I hope that I have not gone too far over time. I am pleased that the Committee is conducting the inquiry. I am firmly of the belief that strong, inclusive and positive RSE will improve the mental health of children and young people here. I would be happy to work with you on making that a reality.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you very much. You covered a lot of ground —

Professor O'Neill: Indeed.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): — which is much appreciated.

I was going to start by asking a question about the really explicit links that you made between mental health and RSE. I think that you are the first witness to have linked those two issues. It is no surprise, given your role, that you made those connections clearly. It is not just a part of the curriculum; it feeds into all of the wider work around mental well-being in schools. However, you covered the issue in such detail that I probably do not need to ask anything more. You said that we should not separate RSE from the wider conversation about mental health and well-being. That is a really welcome contribution. We hear a lot from young people about wanting better RSE and more mental health and well-being education in school, but the two things are not separate; they are very much part of the same picture.

Professor O'Neill: Look up the studies of the programmes that work. The accepted phrase is "social and emotional learning". It is not about mental health interventions in schools; there is some evidence that that can have a negative impact. You are not providing universal counselling or anything like that; you are teaching young people and giving them the skills to manage themselves and their relationships with others. It is fundamental. The whole thing is so important.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): It is a perspective that had not been made so clearly in our evidence sessions. That will be helpful for our considerations.

You focused heavily on the need for RSE to be inclusive, and you referenced evidence from young people about wanting more information on LGBT identities in particular. We have heard evidence from religious and Christian groups in the inquiry. One group in particular put forward the clear view that inclusion is more of a challenge for evangelical Christians in school than it is for young people who identify as LGBT. I am keen to hear your response to that analysis. Will you set out what good, inclusive RSE that respects all identities in school looks like?

Professor O'Neill: That is the idea that young people who have particular religious beliefs feel marginalised and excluded. That is unacceptable. We need to be tolerant and accepting of people's religious views and beliefs. I do not know what the data suggests in that regard. I have not seen any kind of data in the way in which I have seen the surveys that show clearly that LGBT people feel marginalised and unsafe in schools. We need to look at how we collect that evidence and what that looks like. It certainly needs to be addressed. It is a mental health issue. Bullying is a massive mental health issue for young people. It could be about anything. If it is related to their religious identity, that is, obviously, equally wrong, and that needs to be looked at. I would be really keen to work with those groups to understand what that is about.

On the other side of it, if the RSE that a young person who is gay receives is about a heterosexual relationship or if it makes an assumption that there will be male and female parents of a child, that excludes them and is not relevant to their situation. They may wonder where they sit in all of that. If a child from a single-parent family is presented with a stereotypical set-up as being preferential in some way, how does that child feel? It is about words relating to an aspect of a person's identity. It extends even to debates about the ethics and morals of IVF and different ways of forming a family.

When we have such debates, they might resonate with the children's experiences in their own family — deeply personal things. We need to be careful. When you use a trauma-informed lens, you are always thinking, "Who is the child in the room who might be hurt or affected by this?". When using that approach, you think about the traumas that the children in your classroom might be carrying and about how they may be affected by what is being discussed. That is what trauma-informed practice is about. For example, if a child in your class has lost a parent, you need to manage that sensitively. Trauma-informed practice is about having that sensitivity. There will be homosexual and transgender children in any school. Inclusive RSE involves thinking about what the teaching says to them and how to make sure they feel safe, accepted and included. That is the challenge of trauma-informed practice. We need to reflect on that. It is not just about gender identity and sexual orientation — it covers everything — but those are the things that come up in RSE.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): You used phrases such as "trauma-informed practice" and talked about the need to ensure that all identities are respected and that teaching is inclusive. I imagine that some teachers who are watching this Committee evidence session may feel, "I don't know if I am equipped to deliver trauma-informed practice". Would you say that more work needs to be done to ensure that our teaching professionals feel confident and are fully equipped to deliver the sort of RSE that you are setting out in a way that is effective for the young people?

Professor O'Neill: Trauma-informed practice includes a commitment to reflecting on the practice. There is no tick-box to say that we have got it right. We cannot say, "This is how we do it: we need to follow these rules". It is about always thinking about who the marginalised children are in the room and how they might feel. Teachers are good at that. With Operation Encompass, the police came into schools and informed them. The teachers know exactly what needs to be done. They are cognisant of the needs of the children and will manage things. It is about being committed to doing it.

There is training that can be rolled out; we can do training. As much as anything else, it is about having training in ACEs, because it starts with childhood adversity and involves thinking about stress response pathways and how those are impacted on in cases of child abuse, neglect and when attachment in the family is not right. It starts with that, but it is then about looking through that lens and the teacher thinking about the experiences of the children, about how those experiences impact on their behaviour and about how what they say will land with a child who comes from a particular situation. It could be a refugee child, a child from an ethnic minority or a disabled child; there are so many examples. Teachers are really good at that.

A particular skill set is needed to deliver RSE. I am a parent, and I find that stuff really difficult. I have a seven-year-old who asks all the questions. I want to do it right and be factual and scientific, but it is really difficult. In any school, there will be teachers who want to do it and others who are less confident. We are on a journey, and we need to look at where the teachers are on that. It is the same with mental health in that a lot of teachers feel that that is not their strength and do not want to get involved in it, but there are teachers who specialise in it. This involves mental health, so let us treat it in the same way. When teachers are keen and naturally good at it, let them do it. The same goes for groups that are skilled at delivering it. I remember speaking to Relate about the RSE programme that they were delivering in schools: it was excellent. I was thinking that a group such as that could be used. Those groups can help with delivering it. There is a lot of help out there.

It is not about getting it right; it is about being aware. Once we are aware that children carry trauma and have their unique perspectives and once we are aware of what that might be like, that is it. It is not rocket science. We do not expect this to be perfect. We get it wrong all the time when it comes to pronouns and stuff. It is about being aware and being sensitive to the needs of the kids and how it affects them.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I appreciate the evidence that you have given on RSE. Members may want to ask you about other areas, so I am happy to open the conversation up to wherever the questions take it.

Mrs Guy: Thank you both for giving evidence today and particularly for the passion that you show on the subject. You articulate it so well in the media. The topic deserves the profile that it is currently getting, so the work that you do is much appreciated.

My first question is more of an RSE question, I suppose. You referenced poor mental health in adolescents and talked about the impact on young girls, in particular. You also referenced some of the evidence around that relating to misogyny, sexism, school pressure, peer relationships and societal perfectionism: they all sound familiar. Obviously, some of those are broader societal issues, but what role can RSE play in tackling those and having an impact for young girls?

Professor O'Neill: It is for girls and boys equally; it is for everyone. It is about looking at what consent is and what it looks like. That is important. We are seeing a debate across society now about behaviour and activities that were considered to be banter by one generation but are offensive to another. It is about having open discussions about that and about what sexism looks like, what it is like to be a girl and to feel unsafe, how we can help each other feel safe, how to be respectful in our relationships and how to cope with rejection. It is all of that and how we navigate that. It is also about how we say no and, "I don't actually want to get involved in a sexual relationship". It is about that and how we communicate our needs. It is about giving young people the language to have those conversations and opening up spaces to explore the topics safely with a sensitive teacher who is equipped to deal with difficult things when they come up. That is what it is for me.

It is about looking at scenarios: "What should it be like? How should you feel most of the time when you are in a marriage? How often should you argue? What do you argue about? What is normal?". It is about having those conversations. Some of the data should also be looked at as well. That is how I see the relationships aspect.

It is also about looking at the chemical stuff that happens when a baby is born and the significance of oxytocin and the importance of skin-to-skin contact, attachment theory and mind-mindedness in the early years. It crosses the gamut of how we feel safe, the importance of social connection for our mental health and well-being and having fun with our friends.

Mrs Guy: You mentioned LGBT concerns — the Chair touched on that too — and you referenced bullying. We have legislation around bullying. Data is captured, but it is not published. Would publishing that data, identifying the incidence of bullying in a school, as we have talked about, and identifying particular trends be a positive step towards enabling us to shape policy interventions more accurately and more effectively?

Professor O'Neill: It depends on what "published" looks like, if you know what I mean. Schools need to use that data to inform their policies and procedures in that school. That is, fundamentally, what the data should be doing, because schools are coming from different places on this literally and metaphorically. In some schools, there will be a lot of bullying for one issue and not for something else, and there will be schools with high proportions of refugees and migrants, and they will, perhaps, have different issues from other schools. It is about the school's reflection: "What are the issues in the school that we need to deal with?". It needs to be used to inform school policies and acted on appropriately. Maybe Nicole has a view on publishing.

Dr Nicole Bond (Office of the Mental Health Champion): Perhaps, on the nature of it. If you were able to say that a portion of the bullying incidents was related to a person's identity, for example, or that it was racism or sexism or whatever, that might help you to understand the scale of the problem. We know that bullying is a significant problem, but it is a catch-all for a lot of things, and we already have policies and legislation that look to address the main reasons. Maybe publishing that data would strengthen it. If you are talking about a dashboard where schools are going to have to publish every year, would that impact on how they were recorded?

Mrs Guy: If the schools are holding the data, they have it. It is about having data on the trends across Northern Ireland, not about a particular school and us seeing what happens in that school. It is about getting that bigger picture of the trends across Northern Ireland and, perhaps, looking at it from a regional perspective or urban areas versus rural areas. That bigger picture of what is happening in schools could give us an idea of where the limited resources that we have could be better targeted to address those problems.

Dr Bond: Yes, especially if you consider the training that would be available to teachers on specific topics, but it would be about protecting individual schools, because we would not want to encourage under-reporting in the official statistics by schools that are fearful of being labelled as having that problem. If you can anonymise it, great.

Professor O'Neill: It should be from the young people's perspective. Let us ask young people about their experiences in school rather than necessarily expecting schools to collect the data. The new inspection framework from the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) covers a lot of this stuff and, in a way, trauma-informed practice. It is about the capacity of the school to reflect on what happens in the school and act on the issues. That is why the ETI inspection framework is really good. It is now about rolling that out in schools and making sure that schools have enough resources to act appropriately when they identify a concern. We do not want bullying league tables or anything like that: then schools will start to manipulate data, and the data becomes the objective rather than making sure that every child has as good an experience at school as possible.

Mrs Guy: I share that concern. I do not think that anybody would want bullying league tables, but perhaps it is worth exploring whether there is a way of capturing the information and using it effectively without that happening.

Professor O'Neill: In that case, that is a good idea.

Mrs Guy: Thank you.

Mr Martin: Thank you, Professor O'Neill, for your evidence today. I could talk all day about ACE and TIP. The Education Minister whom I worked for introduced training on those areas in Northern Ireland. However, I am not going to ask you about that today.

I will quote a bit of your written evidence, which you have also mentioned:

If you oppose moral commentary on gender identity, what, do you feel, are the accepted facts around gender identity?

Professor O'Neill: The scientific facts?

Mr Martin: What is your view of the accepted facts?

Professor O'Neill: The idea of gender identity is not a new thing. We are talking about biological sex and developmental differences as well as gender identity and people who identify as transgender. We know, for example, that there are young people in schools who are transgender. Those are the accepted facts; that is the reality. There is an issue with faith formation teaching in that, I understand, it conflicts with that, and that is difficult. I am putting forward the perspective that, if you have a young person in your class who is transgender or gay, for example, and you provide commentary that that is immoral or unethical, you challenge that person's right to exist, and that is harmful; it impacts on their mental health.

Mr Martin: I accept that. I was not necessarily going down the road of the faith perspective in teaching. I will quote Kathleen Stock, whom you may be aware of. She is a lesbian writer and academic who said:

What I am driving towards, Professor O'Neill, is that what a man or a woman is is a contested area. Teaching on that is therefore contested. We are looking at an RSE curriculum on how you teach what a woman is or what a man is. Lots of women's rights groups are incredibly concerned about accepting TQI+ ideology around some of those subjects. Do you accept that?

Professor O'Neill: I recognise that there is a counterargument and that some people do not accept that transgender people are transgender, but, in reality, in our classrooms, there are young people who identify as transgender. They exist, as do their needs. From a trauma-informed perspective, we need to think about how that sort of moral commentary would impact on their mental health. That is the point that I would make. When I speak to young people who are non-binary or transgender, I hear that they feel very much that the moral commentary that is sometimes provided in schools is harmful, contributes to bullying and makes them feel unsafe. That is the perspective that I am putting across. It impacts on their mental health. I am not denying that there is a group of people who would challenge that, but these are young people whom we have in front of us and who deserve to be treated well.

Mr Martin: Yes. Just to be clear, I am not saying that they should not be treated well; I am just saying that it is a contested space. The ideology that we teach in schools — I accept that there is, perhaps, a range of categories of people in schools — is an important area.

I want to ask you one more question, if that is OK. I will read out a few sentences from your previous oral evidence:

I assume that that is the consultation document on the recent change in the law, which I have here —

I want to ask you to reflect on that. Under legislation, the Department had to consult. It is my understanding that it was the largest number of consultation responses that a Department had ever had. The results indicated clearly that parents trust schools, boards of governors and teachers to decide what to teach. Is it your contention, in light of the consultation responses, that all those views — you have called them wrong and said that they should be rejected — should be rejected or discarded in some way? A lot of people responded to that consultation and gave their views. Where do you stand on that? You are clear in your written evidence that you do not like it.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Could we just get to the question because time is ticking?

Mr Martin: Certainly. You have used the word "rejected". You do not like the responses. How do you align that with the fact that a lot of people took a lot of time to reply to the consultation? Obviously, their views do not align with yours, and you are not happy with what they said and the Department's response.

Professor O'Neill: It is not a representative survey. What you have is a consultation, and particular groups responded to it. If you are going to talk about what the general population want, you would really need some sort of population survey; maybe Northern Ireland life and times or something has that data. Responses to a consultation tend to be skewed towards the extremes. You will get people who have a particular view one way or the other, and you do not get the nuance with those on the middle ground who say, "Well, you know what? This is probably a good idea", or, "I need more information". I have read that.

A lot of people feel that schools should have flexibility, that parents should be able to remove children and all the rest, but I am saying that every child has a right to high-quality, inclusive RSE. The right of the child to that education must come first. Parents may feel that their child should not have that right, but, nonetheless, the child has a right to that education.

It is important that we work with all stakeholders, including groups who are against this to really understand why they are against it and what their fear is. We know that a lot of misinformation has been put out about RSE and what young people are taught in schools. We need to clarify that and to work with groups to help them to understand what it is. At the end of the day, though, young people need the education. They need to know the reality of their relationships, sexuality and gender identity. That teaching needs to be done in schools, and it is important for their mental health. I am happy to talk to any of those groups. I would welcome an opportunity to dig a bit more deeply to understand what their worries are, because I think that a lot of the fear is unfounded, to be honest. I hope that I can have that conversation and help this along in some way.

Mr Martin: Thank you very much. We hear from a lot of witnesses — I agree with you — that children are absolutely entitled to —

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Peter, time is against us here.

Mr Martin: — the education that you describe, which is inclusive and all-embracing. We have talked about safeguarding and some really crucial issues. I am a parent: I am the primary person responsible for the lives of my children, for protecting them and making them grow up as best I can. It is really important that it is not just about the children, because children of a young age need helped and need steered. They need to be told not to put their hand in the fire in case they do not know that. It is about parents' voices being heard in how we look at the area of RSE. That is sometimes lacking here.

Professor O'Neill: The data shows that we are not harming children by doing this. We are really not.

Mr Martin: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I have no desire to shut discussions down, but, if we have long preambles and closing statements, we will struggle to get through everybody. Everybody has indicated that they want to come in. I ask that we get to questions quickly, and, then, we can maybe have more of the follow-up.

Mr Baker: Professor, thank you. I will try to be quick with my questions. I have blended a number of areas, and I will start with a wee quick and easy one. A lot of our young people, particularly those from our trans community, tell me at the youth clubs how much pressure they feel and how much things have changed in a short period, They are being targeted online. They tell us that RSE in school is not good enough, and that has been clear from the presentations that we have had from young people. What is your view on Australia banning online access for under-16s?

Professor O'Neill: It is access to social media.

Mr Baker: Social media, sorry. Yes.

Professor O'Neill: It is a great idea. I wish there was a way of doing it that would mean that all under-16s did not get on to social media, but I just do not see how it will work. I am trying it with my seven-year-old by banning websites and stopping her from going on to YouTube and all that stuff when she is supposed to be doing her homework.

It is really good that the signals are being put up and that we are recognising that that stuff is problematic, but we need to give young people the skills to navigate it and the critical thinking skills to work it out. We should not tell them what to think; we should tell them how to think and how to be critical consumers of what they see on social media, so that, for example, they know when a picture that they see has been airbrushed. In my days, it was magazines, but now it is AI; it is a whole different level. RSE includes those online skills, absolutely. We communicate with people online, and relationships are often online.

I just do not know whether the social media ban will work. The experts who study this say that it probably will not work. Yes, it is an answer, but it is only part of the answer.

Mr Baker: I asked that because it shows the importance of making sure that RSE is taught across the curriculum and that our young people get it in school. Children turn to social media to that get that information, yet a country is banning them from social media.

Professor O'Neill: All the tech companies need to look at how they can make it easy for parents — I was trying to do this last night — to block certain sites or set up parental controls. Why would a company do that? Those companies sell advertising to children: that is what it is at the end of the day. There is no incentive for companies to do it, so the state needs to legislate on that where it can.

There is also a role for the education system to create the awareness and to give young people the skills to navigate it. I have just worked out that I need to be by my daughter's side when she is on a tablet or computer — that is the way it has to be — but that will not work when she is 14 or 15. What happens then? She will have her own account. She can already bypass my passwords and everything else.

Mr Baker: That shows importance of having really good, strong RSE, delivered by the right people.

Professor O'Neill: Yes, and the importance of the relationship between the parent and the child. It goes back to that attachment. Can my daughter tell me anything? If somebody online is looking for a picture and she acts on that, would she able to tell me? That is the test. Can they tell you what they are doing? Do you really know what they are at online? How do you make your relationship strong enough that they can disclose that stuff to you as a parent? Then, how do you manage it? That is the challenge. Legislation is good, for example on phones in schools — it is a good idea to stop kids getting near this stuff where you can — but we have to deal with the real world too.

Mr Baker: I will jump on to a completely different subject. It is about the Protect Life 2 (PL2) strategy and the criticisms that I have heard from mental health groups and advocates about the lack of a basis in objective need. In 2022, there were three times the number of suicides in the most socially deprived areas compared with the least socially deprived areas. What is your view on that and on what interventions can be made?

Professor O'Neill: Are you talking about the idea that we need more investment in deprived areas?

Mr Baker: Yes.

Professor O'Neill: We are debating that as part of the action plan for PL2, because there is an argument there. Should you focus on men, given that three quarters of suicides are by males? Should you focus on deprived areas and put services there? You will then get people who come from other perspectives saying, "Well, what about women?". Some groups say that every suicide needs to be prevented and you need to do what you can to prevent them. We are trying to navigate that. It costs £10 million for a strategy to prevent 200 suicides, which cost the economy over £200 million, but there is not enough money for it.

Suicide is really hard to prevent. It can be prevented, but it is difficult to do so. Restriction of access to methods and provision of crisis services are the two best ways to prevent suicide. The evidence says that we need crisis services, so we need a regional crisis service. Naturally, the needs are greater in deprived areas, so you would see resources being allocated to deprived areas through the crisis service, but it would be done via the regional crisis service.

Under Protect Life 2, a lot of the money is spent on Lifeline. It is available across Northern Ireland, but the numbers of people who call Lifeline are not proportionate across Northern Ireland. Improving that may be about doing campaigns in particular areas, but campaigns have been frozen. It is a really tricky thing to navigate.

In principle, yes, we need to direct resources towards the groups and areas that need them, but we also need to think about every person who is in distress and crisis and how they can get access to a service in a timely way. The regional crisis intervention service will be the game changer. It is relevant to PL2, but it is part of the mental health strategy as well. We are only planning it — we do not even know how much it will cost — but the community and voluntary sector side of that service will be so important to getting it up and running.

There is a lot to talk about on that issue, and I am happy to go into even more detail about what the regional crisis service will mean, the difference it would make and why, through it, deprived areas would end up getting more services. That was a long response, sorry.

Mr Baker: Thank you. I will move on to another issue. I could be here all day talking to you about different wee subjects.

You mentioned trauma and harm. I am thinking about academic selection in the education system. I know what your view is, because I have your quotation from January. What engagement have you had with officials or the Minister about ending academic selection?

Professor O'Neill: My views on that are really clear, and they are not just my views. The independent review of education is the vehicle by which that can be achieved. It is not just about taking something away; it is about thinking of what the whole system does for our children and young people. How are they able to set and achieve their goals and get the qualifications that they need to achieve them?

The independent review of education sets out the idea of tracking a child, measuring their strengths the whole way through and getting them into a school where they will get the qualifications that they need to have a really nice, happy life. Invariably, that will mean something for the idea of there being two types of schools, but, at the end of the day, the only things that anyone really cares about are qualifications: GCSEs and A levels. It gets rid of a lot of that. I know that it is a lot more complex than that, but there is still that pressure. Schools feel the pressure of league tables and figures on students achieving A to C grades at GCSE and A level.

We need to look at how we will implement the independent review of education. We need to look at the status that vocational qualifications in particular have and transition to a situation where only a minority of our young people go through or feel the need to go through tests to get into schools. A lot of schools are doing away with selection. A lot of parents are recognising that the pressure is just too much for children, but we really need to create a level playing field, where we truly believe that every school, regardless of where it is, is a really good school, that a child will do well and that we have real choice. We are nowhere close to that.

I would like to see movement on the independent review, and I think that that is what is happening. The Department of Education is looking at that. Yes, doing away with selection is one thing. Let us change the system so that we do not need to rely on it and we do not have this awful situation every year of putting children through it. The sooner we can move on the independent review, the better.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): We will have to draw a line there.

Professor O'Neill: I could write a book about that one.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Regrettably, Professor O'Neill, the Minister has been clear that he is not going to take any action on academic selection.

Mr Brooks: Hear, hear.

Professor O'Neill: Yes, but the Department is looking at the independent review, and it is part and parcel with that. I live in hope

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I absolutely agree with you, but the Minister's response to the independent review is that he will not act on that recommendation. That is disappointing from my point of view, but I appreciate that there are different views in the room.

I call David Brooks. I ask members to bear with me on timings, because we are very tight.

Mr Brooks: I disagree on academic selection, but I would be for the idea of trying to raise the status of vocational subjects. We have enough to get on with here; that is maybe for another time.

You talked about the idea of celebrating diversity, and you focused on LGBT and understanding that those from that kind of background or identity have traditionally felt isolated and, at times, have been isolated and maligned. There are other examples, which you touched on. That affects people from faith minorities as well. Increasingly, all faiths are minorities in a school environment. Boys may want to be macho and so on, and it can be seen that faith is soft or does not involve the same ideas of what it is to be a man and so on. People can feel equally isolated in that respect.

You also talked about children being in the room when there are discussions or debate around identities and them feeling hurt or isolated or sensitive to that discussion. This is a topic that I have come back to a number of times in these sessions: how do we have those conversations, and should we be having those conversations or debates at all? I understand what you say about a school almost trying to — it is maybe too strong a word — indoctrinate its faith viewpoint on things, but some of the discussions that we have around people's points of view actually engender respect, introduce people to the reality of the world around them in the sense of there being diversity and a spectrum of views and teach that we can hold certain views but respect others' views. How can we have those conversations in classrooms? Should we be having them?

Professor O'Neill: We need to reflect on what conversations we need to have and what topics we pick for those debates. When I was growing up, I was a vegetarian, and I felt strongly that that was so fundamental, but I would not have felt personally threatened by having that debate with other people. There are many areas on which we disagree but about which we can talk. I question why we need to choose an area that is so sensitive and divisive and that can cause so much pain and hurt. That is the first part of it. We were talking about gender identity —

Mr Brooks: The only thing that I will say about that is that that is part of the purpose, though not all of it. There are lots of things that we will agree on in the context of RSE, such as safeguarding. You talked about how people want more LGBT subject matter inserted into the curriculum. That necessarily introduces an issue on which you will not have agreement. There will be different views in the room, as there are in the world around us, so how do we have a discussion that informs us all but also engenders respect for different points of view, different faith views and different non-faith views? How do we do that, and is it important that we do it?

Professor O'Neill: I do not know if we need to discuss the rights and wrongs of everything. We give people the facts.

Mr Brooks: You said — I completely agree — that it is not about whether someone has the right to exist. It is a fact that there are people who feel and identify in a certain way, and that should be respected. Certainly, nobody should be subject to bullying; I want to make that clear. However, they will come into a world where there are different views on relationships and identity. My colleague mentioned the views on what a man is and what a woman is. Is it not important to have that discussion in a sensitive environment with a teacher who can build young people's respect and understanding of the world around them, so that they are not introduced to it more harshly beyond the school gates?

Professor O'Neill: I do not know. It is almost the idea that you are hardening the young people by starting the discussion at school. I just do not know if that is helpful.

We approach it through the lens of the social identity complexity. We are introducing a theoretical framework to OUR Generation, which is a PEACE PLUS funded project that is being rolled out. The idea of social identity complexity is to tackle peacebuilding by emphasising that we all have different and multiple identities. I am "Team Cats" now, because I have two cats: I was "Team Dog". If there are other cat owners, we have something in common. That can help us think about the different groups that we are part of. The idea is to help young people understand that we are all different and we all have different identities, and, even though we have different identities — Team Dog is different from Team Cat — we can still get along. It is a fun way to introduce the idea that we are all part of different groups and have different identities.

Having a faith-based identity in a particular religion is a really good thing. It is good to be part of different groups. We help young people to feel proud of their identity. We can then look at the controversial issues and the divisions of the two communities in Northern Ireland. Once young people realise that we all have multiple identities and that it is good for our mental health to remember that we all have different identities, we can more easily see that others in the room are similar to us, are part of our tribe and have our back, and we feel safer in that setting. We do that through social identity complexity. We do not necessarily pick controversial areas to latch on to. We help young people to think about the different groups that they are part of — their gender identities and sexual orientations are only one part of that. We make them realise that we have a lot in common and are a part of lots of different groups. That is how we should do it, rather than launching into difficult debates about a person's sexuality, which is such a deep and sensitive thing for a child.

Mr Brooks: I agree with most of what you have said up to that point. The point of the question was to ask how we do that.

Professor O'Neill: I do not know if we need to.

Mr Brooks: Areas such as abortion are strongly contested in the world that the young person will confront at one stage or another, as has been the case for all of us. We will end up having that discussion here as well. If those issues are to be introduced and discussed in the classroom, how do we educate young people and make them aware of the different viewpoints? Some people push the idea that those areas need to be addressed in the classroom more than they are now. If we are going to do that, how do we do it in a way that respects the different viewpoints, reflects the fact that it is a contested area and does so in a way that builds respect rather than division in the classroom?

Professor O'Neill: It was done recently in the assisted dying debate; that showed that it is possible. There is a distinction between an issue like abortion, where we can talk about different religious perspectives on when life begins and all that, and saying, "You shouldn't be gay", or, "You shouldn't be trans", when a gay or trans person is sitting in front of you. To me, that is at a different level because you are talking about the person.

Mr Brooks: That is not what I am suggesting. I am not suggesting that any teacher should stand in the classroom and say, "You should not be this or that". That is not where I am with it.

Professor O'Neill: But that is where the debate goes sometimes.

Mr Brooks: I do not believe that that is what schools with a faith-based ethos are trying to do, for the most part. It is important to realise that. The idea that there is almost an indoctrination process has been engendered. There are misunderstandings from one side of the argument to the other.

Professor O'Neill: When young people talk about their experience of this, that is what they take away. Religion and faith is always positive, and the intention is to help people, and it is positive for a person's mental health to be part of a religious community. That is a good thing. The intention may well be good, but how it lands with the young person is often not the way in which the group intended it to. That person may come away feeling that they cannot be part of that group because they are gay.

Mr Brooks: Being a religious young person can be difficult in the modern world as well.

Professor O'Neill: Yes, something that I have taken away from this is that religious people can feel marginalised too.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I will come in as time is beating us here. We have been round the houses on this issue in many evidence sessions, and it is clear that we are struggling to find agreement on how it rolls out. The conversation today has highlighted that, when we come to write our report, the Committee will need to take some time to work through how we will frame any response to this aspect of the inquiry. I am sorry to have had to cut in, but I am not sure that the conversation was going to get us any further —

Mr Brooks: That is fair enough.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): — and time is against us.

Mrs Mason: Thanks, Professor O'Neill, for the presentation today. I want to briefly go back to the Protect Life 2 strategy and what Danny talked about. It is more of a comment than a question because I have a raft of other things that I want to ask. I feel that what we are doing now is not working, and we hear the term "early intervention" time and time again. Surely, if the data and the figures show that the more deprived areas are where we should focus resources, that is what we should do. That is not to say that we should forget about others, but we should target certain areas. I do not want to get into a debate on that one.

Recently, I have met a number of school principals, and one topic that continually comes up is waiting times for counselling services for pupils and for child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). We are even getting to a point where principals, who are already under severe pressure with their budgets and stretched resources, are employing their own mental health nurses or counselling services. What is your view on that? What is your office doing to advocate for that? I know that it is something that principals find extremely difficult to deal with.

Professor O'Neill: This is about resources, mental health services and the transformation of mental health services. There are a lot of initiatives across the trusts to try to improve those waiting times for children and young people's mental health services. We need the workforce plan to be implemented; we do not have the workforce. Healthy Happy Minds was a good programme, but schools had great difficulty in accessing counsellors for that, and organisations were not able to step up and deliver those services. That is why systemic change and the full mental health strategy need to be implemented. We go back to the fact that we are one third of the way through and have invested only one eighth of the money that we need to deliver the mental health strategy. We are not seeing the change that we should see at this stage.

Having said all that, I know that there is a lot of work to manage those waiting lists and to make sure that there are no inappropriate referrals. The Education Authority (EA) is delivering counselling in primary schools. When we say "counselling", it is rarely one-to-one talking therapy with a child, especially in primary school; it would be a family therapy type of thing. Work is happening, and services are available, but we need the full mental health strategy.

To be clear, the Department of Health says that it cannot invest any more money in that. I am asking all the parties in the Executive to look at this, because it is a collective responsibility. We need to make sure that this is funded. Putting it all on Health does not seem to be working at the minute.

On the point about deprivation, the Protect Life 2 strategy needs to sit alongside the mental health strategy. There is an early intervention and prevention plan in the mental health strategy that would do a lot of the early intervention and prevention work that is needed to prevent suicide from an earlier stage. Again, that is about funding the mental health strategy. The Protect Life 2 strategy is about Lifeline and services on the ground. It is tiny amounts of money for suicide prevention work. We can talk about the idea that we should divert more of that into deprived areas or whether we should advertise Lifeline across Northern Ireland or do something different. The £10 million is not enough, so we need to view that mental health strategy as being fundamental to both of those issues, Cathy.

Mrs Mason: OK, thanks. I go back to the Healthy Happy Minds programmes. You mentioned the EA services in primary schools: will the emotional well-being teams deliver that?

Professor O'Neill: No. The emotional well-being teams will help schools to develop an environment that supports mental health and well-being. They are not about individual therapies for pupils. They are really important, though. They will go towards inclusivity, making everybody feel safe at school, helping teachers to recognise when there is a problem and making sure that they know the referral pathways into mental health services, but they are not a mental health service. Maybe people were disappointed at the start because they thought that they would be teams of counsellors going into schools. That is not what it looks like, but it is what we need. It is the best use of resources right now when we do not have the staff to do the counselling that would be required. We need to start with the workforce, that regional mental health service, and everything else.

Dr Bond: The only thing that I would add to that is that, when we speak to schools — a lot of my research before was focused on schools, which is why I am in chatting about this — there is a disconnect between referrals going to CAMHS, for example, and then being told that they are inappropriate. What that means is that they are inappropriate for clinical intervention, as in counselling and one-to-one therapies. Although the young person certainly continues to need support, maybe it just does not need to take place in that clinical setting. That does not take away from that fact that schools are then left thinking, "Where does that young person get support if we cannot provide it? Where are we supposed to go?". That is the early intervention and prevention stuff.

It is about recognising that the fundamentals of RSE are about building those connections and relationships. If we have that in youth centres in areas of high deprivation, building that connection and giving young people a peer group where they can experience things that they enjoy can boost their emotional health as well. It is about giving them the skills to talk about their emotions, to recognise when something is problematic and may need clinical intervention or when they are just having a bad time and need to seek support from a family member, teacher, peer or another professional around them and to know where those supports are. That is where RSE comes in. Again, some schools do not have those resources round them. They do not have the level 2 community-based supports that early intervention work really relies on. With crisis intervention and stuff, they are trying to identify those services because they are not necessarily mental health services. They are youth groups and sports clubs, but they fundamentally give a young person the connection that allows them to thrive.

Mrs Mason: Thanks for that. I get that, because the feedback that we get is that children have to wait until it is serious enough before they are referred on. At the minute, when they feel issues and may need counselling services, they are told that it is not serious enough yet and that they have to wait until it gets more serious. That is the feedback that we get from principals and school leaders.

Danny mentioned lobby groups that we had met —.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Sorry, Cathy: it would need to be the quickest question and the quickest answer, because we are way over time.

Mrs Mason: OK. We got to hear directly from parents of children who were in school and were in the system and receiving counselling. They were also being prescribed antidepressants. There seems to be a rise in the number of young people who are being prescribed antidepressants. I am not saying that there is not a place for them. What is your view on that? Is that the result of schools not having resources for educational services or early intervention?

Professor O'Neill: On the prescribing of antidepressants, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines are there, and we would hope that they would be followed. The problem is that we do not have the talking therapies that are available. We do not have the resources for them. We need the mental health strategy to be implemented in order to build up those services. Medication can be useful, as you have said — it can be part of a treatment package — but it needs to be taken under the supervision of a mental health worker, at least, and we do not have multidisciplinary teams with mental health workers across Northern Ireland yet. That is a problem. We need to invest in mental health services now.

We also need to look at ways in which to reduce the stress and pressure on young people and the creation of environments that are conducive to mental health difficulties. That relates back to our earlier discussions about school settings, early intervention and attachment. Attachment, adversity and ACEs predict mental illness. Then, we have stress and pressure at school, bullying and all the rest of it layered on top of that. We are working to find out how we can get the mental health strategy funded and get more money into mental health services.

From speaking to CAMHS and hearing about the level of the needs, I know that they are dealing with severely ill young people. It is very shocking and dramatic. They have young people with eating disorders who are dangerously underweight and need to be tube-fed: that is the level that they deal with. I do not think that people appreciate that when they think, "CAMHS will not take this referral" or whatever. CAMHS deals with very seriously ill young people, and that middle way — that early intervention stuff — is not available in the way that it needs to be.

A lot of good work is happening, however, and people should still reach out at an early stage. There are pockets of excellent practice and groups that do amazing work. Get your child help, and keep pushing. If you are listening to this, do not despair. A lot of amazing work is happening, but we need to push for the transformation.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you. That is a really important message for anyone who is watching the Committee.

Colin, I will bring you in. You have waited patiently: this is your opportunity.

Mr Crawford: I thank you both for your time in front of the Committee this afternoon.

One of the things that come up time and again is how the young people have consistently called or asked for RSE to be made more relevant, inclusive and engaging. How important is it for the Department to listen to the young people's voices? How could the Department do that better?

Professor O'Neill: Obviously, it is vital that you speak to the people whom you know. When you are talking about something that will help young people, they are the people whom you need to go to first to ask, "What do you want? What do you need? What would help you?". That is essential. It is a really important part of my job to speak to young people and people with lived experience, and there are many young people who want to speak. We still need to find ways of getting the voices of the most marginalised young people and those who do not think that their voices are relevant. We need to get them into the room and bring them into the discussion — this discussion even. The Children's Commissioner does a lot of amazing work. It is their territory too.

We need to ask young people whether they feel that their voices are heard. We asked that question in the survey. Do they have opportunities to affect policy and to change things? Look at the evidence of it. What policies have been introduced on the basis of young people's feedback? The idea is, "You said this; we did that". That is what every other service would ask. If I get an Amazon delivery — other services are available, obviously — I am asked to rate it, and then I am asked, "What could we do better?". It is that sort of thing.

We need to ask young people, "Are your voices heard?", and tell them when we have acted on the basis of what they have said. That goes right through to school councils in primary school. Are they tackling things? Can the children set the agenda of the issues that they are allowed to discuss, first and foremost? Then, when they set the agenda and discuss those things, are their voices heard? That is part of trauma-informed practice as well in the ideas of equality and transparency: "We are listening to you; you have a voice; you have a choice here."

Then we have to be accountable. We have to say, if we cannot do what they have asked us to do, why we cannot do it. Sometimes, there are tensions between what we can offer young people and what they want. We need to be clear about that and the boundaries and everything.

Go back to the principles of trauma-informed practice, and we see clearly that young people are powerless in so many ways. We set the rules for them, and we dictate everything from what they wear to everything in school. They really are vulnerable, and we need to listen to them in all the ways that I have said.

Mr Crawford: I have one more question. The consultation document that David spoke about mentions allowing parents to exclude their children from certain elements of the RSE curriculum. You touched on that briefly in your opening remarks. How can the Department balance parental rights with the young person's right to access vital education about relationships?

Professor O'Neill: That is the issue. Furthermore, how do we balance the issue of faith formation in education with all those different rights? For me, the child's right has to come first, because they are the vulnerable person. As a society, we need to understand, first, why a parent would want to deny that to their child and help them with that. That would be a worry for me. Sometimes, they are trying to protect their child. If I had a transgender child, maybe I would want to exclude them from conversations that, I felt, might be, in some way, harmful to that child. We have to listen to all the parties and work out a way through it that is respectful.

Children and young people need relationships education. We are talking about a tiny element of that. It could be abortion or something to do with gender identity and sexuality. When we distil it, it is a tiny part of it. There should be a way through it if we use trauma-informed practice as a lens and listen to all the different parties. It is not insurmountable. We have had huge issues to navigate in Northern Ireland, and we have managed to find ways through, so we should be able to do this. All those rights are at the crux of what we are talking about here: how do we do that? However, the kids must come first. They have the most to lose in all of it, if it is not done right.

Mr Crawford: That is great. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): That is a good note to finish on. If we can deliver the Good Friday Agreement here, maybe the Committee can deliver a report on RSE. [Laughter.]

That would be something that we can all hope for.

Mr Brooks: You are an optimist.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate that sometimes the evidence sessions can feel rushed, because people have so many things that they want to ask about. It is about trying to keep everything to time. However, we appreciate your evidence today.

Professor O'Neill: I am accessible. Please contact me to have the discussions. Send us an email, even, and ask about PL2 or whatever. Reach out and we will provide responses to any of the questions that you have. We will help in whatever way we can. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): We very much appreciated this afternoon.

Professor O'Neill: Good luck.