National Anti-Bullying Website Launched By Minister For Education

A new National Anti-Bullying website has been launched as part of the government's Action Plan on Bullying.

Minister for Education and Skills, Jan O'Sullivan, launched the tacklebullying.ie website, developed by the National Anti-Bullying Research and Resource Centre (ABC) at Dublin City University (DCU).

The new website will provide information, support and advice for students, teachers and parents on how to recognise and deal with bullying behaviour and allows teenagers to share experiences with their peers online.

The launch of the website is part of the final phase of implementation of the Government's Action Plan on Bullying. The Action Plan, which was published in January 2013, sets out twelve actions to help prevent and tackle bullying in primary and post primary schools. The actions focus on support for schools awareness raising and research.

Launching the website at DCU, the Minister congratulated the Anti-Bullying Centre on developing this "invaluable resource" that would provide "a single point of information and support for young people, parents and teachers affected by bullying".

The Minister also highlighted some other recent developments in the implementation of the Action Plan and formally launched a piece of research into preventing school bullying of children with special needs or disability, which was published by the National Disability Authority earlier this year.

In addition, the Minister announced an extra €33,000 in funding for the National Parents Councils (primary and post primary) anti-bullying training programme for parents this year. The additional funding will bring the total amount spent on the programme to almost €250,000 since 2013.

The Minister thanked everyone involved in the development and ongoing implementation of the Action Plan. She said that their contributions were making a difference, adding that "bullying is not a problem that schools alone can tackle and it is incumbent on each and every one of us in the wider community to stand up to bullying."

(MH)