The committee went into private session at 11.35 a.m.

Chairman: We are now in public session. I would like to welcome Professor Patricia Casey and Ms Breda O'Brien to this meeting of the Joint Committee on the Constitution. We've received your presentation which has been circulated to the members. It is our intention to lay it before the Houses at a subsequent meeting. The format of this meeting is that you may make a very brief opening statement, if you wish, which will be followed by a question and answer session with the members. I want to draw your attention to the fact that while members of the committee have absolute privilege, this same privilege does not apply to you.

I'd like to welcome both of you for the interest you've shown in this subject and for your submission. I understand that the submission was developed on foot of a conference you organised which was concerned with reducing the rate of abortion. I take it from your submission that that's the issue you wish to address the committee on today, the actual question of the rate of abortion in Ireland and whether it is possible to reduce.

I take it you both wish to exercise your right of audience. Do you each want to make a short opening statement?

Ms Breda O'Brien: The reason we were so anxious to address the committee is because you'd need the wisdom of Solomon to resolve this particular dilemma but no matter which option you go for there still is going to be a huge question of how do we reduce the numbers because there is no stomach, I believe, in Ireland for abortion on demand. Most of the people you've had in to speak to you already have been only addressing very small and very specific cases in which they would like utilisation of abortion or not, as the case may be. So the 6,000, as it unfortunately is now, remains something which needs to be addressed.

My interest in it goes back a long time. I am currently a columnist with The Irish Times but it predates that by a long time. Perhaps more relevant is the fact that I'm a job sharing teacher and that I've been involved in teaching relationships and sexuality education for 11 years. That is one of the things I would like to address. The other area I would like to address is the whole area of counselling, particularly in the light of recent developments in relation to accreditation of counsellors and so on. That is basically my interest in being here.

Professor Patricia Casey: My interest stems from the fact that I'm a psychiatrist, a practising psychiatrist in the Mater Hospital and I treat women who have had abortions and who suffer adverse psychological consequences. I, therefore, as a health issue, believe it's imperative that we do what we can to reduce the necessity for abortion and the consequences that affect some women. Because of my concern about the abortion issue and wanting to reduce the numbers, I was one of the organisers, with Breda, of the 5,000 Too Many conference. On that basis I'm here.

Perhaps I could begin. I've prepared a brief document, it's one page and three lines long, that I'll circulate to you and you can read at your convenience. It's what I believe to be the first arm, and a very important arm, of reducing the abortion rate and reducing the interest that women show in abortion. It stems from research in the United States, done by a Dr. Charles Kenny, and a number of years ago he did two major studies, published in 1994 and '97, in which he examined the reasons, the motivational factors behind women seeking abortion.

One of the very interesting findings that emerged was that women seek abortion because they believe that their life will end if they have the baby. By that they don't mean the physical life, but life in the broader metaphysical sense, in the sense of career, family, future, etc. The second important finding was that women who seek abortion acknowledge, in fact, that they are carrying a baby and that the foetus is a human being so programmes of prevention that are directed at trying to convince women that the baby is human are misplaced and unnecessary because women already know that.

On the basis of those findings, Dr. Paul Swope, who is the director the Caring Foundation, launched an advertising campaign and the advertising campaign was carried on national TV stations in many states in the US. These adverts were conducted from the woman's perspective, not from the perspective of the partner or the baby, the foetus, but from the woman's perspective, painting a picture of the woman's turmoil and then giving images of possibilities that exist for that woman, the fact that women can overcome the crisis and can go on to live positive, fulfilling lives if they choose the option of continuing the pregnancy.

It would seem from pre- and post-assessment studies that there has been a reduction in the numbers seeking abortion in the states those advertisements were run. That seems to be related. One of the measures they looked at was not just the crude abortion rates in the two different scenarios, but they looked at whether women could recall having seen the ads or not and it seemed that those who recalled having seen the ads were more likely to continue with a crisis pregnancy to term than those who hadn't. So those ads are continuing to be run in the United States. Along with the ads they carried a 1800, a free phone number so that practical help was available to any women who saw the ad and thought "Yes, perhaps this is something I should consider". There was a free number they could ring.

I think that this has very exciting possibilities for Ireland. Obviously one would have to design ads that were specific to the Irish situation, using Irish actors and Irish characters, but I think with careful management it is possible. That's the summary of my first submission and, as I say, you have one page on it there if you want to ask me any questions on it or clarify anything.

Chairman: On your covering letter....it was long subsequent to your original submission, and because of the slight of confusion about when it arrived....but it mentioned promoting positive images of motherhood.

Professor Casey: Yes.

Chairman: I take it that's what you'll be speaking to in further additional submissions.

Professor Casey: Yes, that's exactly it, that's right.

Chairman: You also mentioned adoption, counselling, relationship and sexuality education and further research. I wonder would you like to take each of those in turn and maybe say a few words.

Professor Casey: We were going to do turn and turn about on different issues if that's acceptable.

Chairman: I would take adoption first. I'd take you through those issues before members put questions on adoption.

Professor Casey: I'll speak to adoption as well and Breda then will speak to the other two issues. I'm struck by the fact that the public still seems to be very ignorant about modern adoption. The public is still working out of an adoption model that goes back to the '50s, I think, that everybody would now agree was harsh and cruel and thank goodness it's behind us. I think, however, there is a huge job to be done in informing the public, first of all, and then specific target audiences, particularly women who have crisis pregnancies, about modern adoption and how it works. I believe that that information process could be done along similar lines to the Swope campaign that I've just spoken to. You are all familiar with the Citizen Traveller campaign. I'm sure that a similar campaign to the Citizen Traveller campaign could be conducted in relation to adoption, to inform the public about the modern approach.

It also seems to me that there is a need for training of all personnel who're involved in women with crisis pregnancies. I don't think we can blame social workers exclusively for the problems that have been befalling the adoption process. I think all personnel need to be au fait with modern adoption procedures, particularly midwives and GPs. People write to me to tell me they have wanted to make their baby available for adoption but were given the impression that this was a very abnormal thing to do.

I do not know if some of you read an article by Brenda Power about two weeks ago in The Sunday Tribune on the whole issue of parenting and teenagers. She interviewed somebody from, I think it was, Cherish who commented that giving up one's baby was a very abnormal thing to do. It is a difficult thing to do and is not something most women, even with crisis pregnancies, would want to do but to stigmatise it as being a grossly abnormal thing is very unfair to women who might be considering it as an alternative.

All people concerned with adoption need to be au fait with modern procedures which are more open and transparent. I am an adoptive mother myself and I know how it works. We are in contact with the mother. We write to them, get cards, etc., so I am very familiar with modern adoption procedures at a personal level as well as professionally.

There is also a lack of resources. Many of the adoption agencies are now devoting all of their meagre resources to contact tracing. I think that is most unfortunate. If more resources were available perhaps some of the bodies and organisations which have moved out of adoption might move back into the adoption area and do some groundwork in the national adoption scene; most adoptions now are from abroad. I think that is a summary of what I want to say on the adoption issue.

One thing briefly, I know there are proposals from the Law Reform Commission in relation to adoption and the issue of veto or non-veto on information. My personal belief is that there should not be a veto on non-identifying material such as birth weight, medical health of the parents, etc., but that there should be an optional veto on identifying material. That veto should not be written in stone so if, for example, a birth mother, at some point in the future, did want to make her name available to the adopted child she could do so. That is my personal view on the veto issue. I think it would be detrimental to women in the future who might be interested in making their babies available for adoption if they were not given the right of veto on identifiable information.

Chairman: Counselling was the next subject.

Ms O'Brien: May I make two brief comments in relation to adoption? The Department of Health has taken the positive step recently of agreeing to fund a leaflet on the lines of "Pregnant and Considering Adoption". That is very positive but it is only a beginning. Much more needs to be done in relation to that.

To reinforce what Professor Casey has said in relation to resources. Open adoption or semi-open adoption demands much more resources because the adoption agencies are, basically, undertaking to keep two parties - the adoptive parents and the original birth parents - in contact for a minimum of 18 years. That is obviously very demanding on everybody involved. Neither Professor Casey nor I would like to advocate that adoption would be a majority solution but that it could be a solution for more women than it is currently.

With regard to counselling, over the last year there have been some extremely unpleasant revelations about the nature of some pregnancy counselling agencies - manipulative, coercive methods and also some highly dubious practices in relation to actual children. We would all share a concern about the regulation of that. This is probably what prompted a recent move by, you will excuse me if I refer to it as the former EHB. It is a mouthful if I give it its proper title - the former EHB. They issued basically an ultimatum to every counselling agency that they fund - as you know, State funding to all the pregnancy counselling agencies is channelled through the former EHB - in which they said that all counsellors would have to be accredited to either the Irish Association of Counselling and Therapy or the Irish Council for Psychotherapy. This was greeted with tremendous shock by the largest of the agencies, CURA and LIFE, and also by PACT which, even though it is known as the Protestant adoption agency, also runs a separate pregnancy counselling service, for separate reasons. In the case of CURA and LIFE, they work with volunteers and it is quite demanding. I will run briefly through them.

If you want to register with IACT - I am choosing this one because ICP is much more demanding than this - you have to have done at least one year full-time or two to three years part-time course; you have to have a minimum of 100 hours supervised client work; a minimum of 350 hours, including skills hearing self-development; a detailed study of at least one major school of counselling; and from 2002 a minimum of 50 hours personal therapy - in other words dealing with your own issues. After training you must have completed 450 hours of individual client work with one hour of supervision for every ten hours of counselling and have been in ongoing supervision in Ireland with the same supervisor for one year immediately preceding application.

They are incredibly demanding for volunteers. It would actually mean that neither CURA nor LIFE - and PACT for a different reason because social workers were not considered to be qualified counsellors and they would have to obtain this as well - would not be in a position to receive the State funding which has greatly improved their service over the last four or five years.

An even more crucial point is that it does not seem to understand the nature of pregnancy counselling. It is quite different from counselling in the normal standard sense. If I go to a counsellor, the first thing, normally, is that we would negotiate a contract for, perhaps, six sessions. We would agree parameters, we would decide what we would be discussing, we would institute a review. It is an ongoing process in which deep seated issues would be looked at. That does not apply to crisis pregnancy. By its nature, crisis is short lived. Intervention will happen in the immediate future no matter which direction a person chooses to go. Very different skills are needed for crisis intervention counselling.

And I think it demonstrated the former EHB's lack of understanding that they did not demand that volunteers who do telephone counselling would have to have any qualification whatsoever. As you know, many women who are in crisis will only use the telephone. It may be the only contact. They may never come into a centre or to an agency. It also did not understand the nature of volunteerism. CURA and LIFE have actually been running their own training programmes. CURA particularly has a very intensive programme which is geared specifically towards pregnancy and towards dealing with that. They recognise absolutely that they are not qualified as counsellors. They are not qualified to deal with issues, for example, such as rape. If somebody has been raped they are referred on to the Rape Crisis Centre. That is seen as a separate issue to the pregnancy. I think it did not understand the nature of pregnancy crisis and it was an unfortunate way to deal with it. I think they have rescinded to some extent on that and they are now more open to negotiation. The former EHB should abandon what they are doing and go back to consultation - consult with the people.

If I could just tell you what CURA do. They have a formal 70 hour training course in personal development, counselling and telephone skills, given by accredited trainers who are knowledgeable about the particular requirements of pregnancy counselling. They have counselling supervision, usually through a supervised peer review group, once a month where verbatims, in other words an interview with a client, would be presented or relevant issues discussed. They have an ethical policy and a code of ethics. They have professional indemnity insurance. Their service is open to all and free to all and they have a published annual report. I think that could provide quite a workable model and I would go so far as to say that even people who are accredited already, in the classical sense of counselling, perhaps might need to do this on top of what they are actually doing whereas volunteers would need to do this as a minimum. I would suggest that as a method of dealing with the unsavoury practices of some agencies, someone should not be able to advertise as a pregnancy counselling agency unless they can prove that their people have undertaken this.

We have had anecdotal evidence also of unfortunate practices regarding counselling. Emily O'Reilly, some months ago, referred to a friend of hers who was pregnant, had a number of children and who felt that she was rushed into an abortion, who subsequently decided that she did not want an abortion, carried the child and was quite angry about the way that she was treated. I have lots of anecdotal evidence of people not being counselled properly in relation to adoption. I think that anybody who is being given Government funding should sign a code of ethics consistent with our Constitution which demands respect for all life, born and unborn, the mother and the child and that they should sign a code of ethics saying they are going to pursue, as a consistent goal, the reduction in the number of abortions.

Obviously, this would have to be through non-manipulative and non-coercive methods, primarily through active listening. There is a mythology out there that some of the agencies do not discuss all the options. CURA, LIFE and the others discuss all the options. They simply do not give information such as names and addresses. I think it would be vital that those who do supply names and addresses would be required to also give a Government sponsored and Government produced leaflet on the side effects or the potential effects of abortion.

I have a model here; it is only a model. It is American and is slightly out-dated. The research is not bang up to date. I will leave it with people to have a look at later. It is called "Making an Informed Decision About Your Pregnancy". It has very straightfoward information in it, things like that by the 18th to 21st day there is a heart beat in relation to foetal development, abortion techniques, physical risks to women, risks to future childbearing, psychological disturbances and the fact that it is a permanent decision. Because of the material which Dr. Casey has produced in relation to the effects on women of not concentrating on the foetus or the unborn child, I think this should only be given to women who have shown a definite interest in pursuing abortion. Obviously if somebody asks you for names, addresses and telephone numbers that is a definite interest in pursuing abortion. It should not be thrown around willy-nilly but it would help people to make an informed decision. We all want women to make informed choices and it would have to be peer reviewed and have the most up to date medical and psychological information in it.

The most common complaint of women worldwide, and I have done a fair amount of reading in relation to this, who regret abortion is why did somebody not tell me - why did somebody not tell me it would be like this? I think that would cover that very much. That is basically what I have to say in relation to counselling.

Professor Casey: Clinically patients say to me: "why did nobody tell me this was going to be the situation" or "why did nobody tell me I might have this side effect or that side effect?" That is a common theme that runs through the vocabulary of women who have emotional problems after abortion.

Chairman: As regards education and research, the submission is clear. What I take from it is that we must encourage young people to say no. Is that a fair summary?

Ms O'Brien: It is a fair summary but it is slightly more complicated than that. If it were a simple matter of just saying no we would not have the abortion figures that we have. Can I just put something on the record as a matter of interest? In the Irish Medical Times, the latest issue, Dr. Ailís Ní Riain, in an address I think to the Irish College of General Practitioners, pointed out that the adolescent abortion rate in the Netherlands is actually higher than ours. It is 5.2 per thousand whereas ours is 4.6 per thousand and their birth rate is lower; theirs is around 6.9 per thousand and ours is around 16.7 per thousand, per thousand live births that is. In my research preparing for this I came across -----

Chairman: Do you have the reference for that?

Ms O'Brien: Yes. It is the Irish Medical Times 19/05/00, the last issue of the Irish Medical Times, last week basically. There is another figure that is important in relation to the Dutch experience which is that abortions up to eight weeks which are carried out in doctors' surgeries are not counted, there are no statistics available for them. I made stringent attempts to get statistics on them and was unable to do so. The Dutch Government was able to confirm to me that this was the case.

Professor Casey: They are termed "menstrual extractions".

Ms O'Brien: They are not termed abortions. There are no figures available on them so the Dutch abortion figures may not actually be as glorious as they may seem to be. Any abortion is one too many. According to the Council of Europe 1998 which looked at many, many countries, our abortion rate was 10.9 per thousand live births, Holland's was 11.9 per thousand live births. I am not going to be facetious and say perhaps Holland should be looking at what we are doing because I think there is so much more we could be doing but I think there is some degree of perhaps seeing the Dutch experience as the model or the ideal which may not be borne out by empirical evidence.

I am aware that we are taking a lot of time but I just want to say very briefly Douglas Kirby is recognised as the prime researcher in sex education in the United States. Unfortunately what he has come up with is that there is no magic bullet. There is no approach you can point to and say this will - you are familiar I can see, Chairman, with that concept in relation to these hearings but in relation to sex education it is, unfortunately, also true. He made an interesting comment in 1991 and I can leave this with you rather than reading out the sources and references. He said it may actually be easier to delay the onset of intercourse than to increase contraceptive practice. That has been borne out around the world. I have a number of references which I will not go into but according to The Guardian on October 13 last year, the British pregnancy advisory service in a study of 2,000 women who had sought abortions said contraception cannot be relied on to prevent pregnancy in the UK; the New Zealand Medical Journal, 1994, a study of women - the British pregnancy advisory service of women presenting for abortion, 59% of them cited contraceptive failure. That was 38% condom failure and 17% pill failure. If contraception were the answer there would be no abortions in Britain and if contraception were the answer there would be no abortions in the US either.

A similar study in New Zealand - again, women presenting for abortion - 61% of women had been using a method of contraception in the month they got pregnant. Some 25% had been using the pill, 29% using condoms that experienced failure. The most interesting statistic for me in that is one-fifth, approximately 20%, had been using contraception perfectly. It was not human error. It was pure contraceptive failure. Then there is an Irish study by Dr. Maeve Robinson which was 163 patients attending an Irish family planning clinic. Of 163 patients, 83 had used contraception and experienced contraception failure. So there is no magic bullet. It would seem intuitively that the way to go is to encourage young people to use contraception but it does not seem to be that way.

What is emerging from the United States... the American Government has recently mandated $250 million for what they call "abstinence education". I prefer the term "delaying sexual activity". The RSE - Relationships and Sexuality Education the proper term for it - is just a module within social, personal and health education. I think that is a much more healthy way of looking at it. As advocates of health, can we be advocating to young people that contraception is the answer to everything, particularly condoms particularly when we have a growth in the incidence of human papilloma virus which condoms do not protect against and which are implicated in cervical cancer?

The implications for young women engaging in sexual intercourse at an early age are much more serious than for young men. Young men do not escape unscathed but young women have much more serious consequences. Chlamydia, which has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, actually results quite often in pelvic inflammatory disease which results quite often in infertility. These are very serious things that we need to look at when we are advising young people. I think we have this ...I was talking to a group of young people recently and this person, a very bright, articulate young woman, said to me the media are not remotely interested in the 70%. I said: " what 70%"? She said the 70% that are not sexually active, the ones who do not go off the rails, the ones who are quite sane and sensible, we are quite boring, you never hear about us. We have concentrated all our efforts on the 30% and have assumed that the 70% are an aberration and that we cannot move the statistics in the other direction, that the 70% must become lower and the 30% must become higher. The evidence from the United States is very promising in that it can be done. The average age of losing virginity has increased by a year which is significant if you think of young people over the past number of years since the mandating of the DSA - delaying sexual activity - model. I think I have said enough.

Chairman: The only subject left in your submission relates to a study on women and crisis pregnancies. Did you want to comment on that study? It has been briefed to the members of the committee, as you know, and I see you have a short note on it. Perhaps you would like to elaborate on that.

Professor Casey: I will just briefly say that I don't think we should think that that study----- It was a very good study but it's the beginning rather than an end in itself. I believe that for the future we should have more long-term studies identifying any changing factors that will affect women's abortion decisions. In particular I am interested in measuring the psychological consequences of abortion in the Irish context. There are no studies on that. All of the studies that have been done so far on the psychological effects have been done in Sweden, in the United States, in Britain, in Japan, countries like that. There is none from Ireland, so I think we need ongoing research in that area.

The Trinity College study was a qualitative study. It was an interview type study in which different groups of women were asked for their opinions as to why they were choosing the course of action they were taking. That's a very good way of study but there are also quantitative studies in which more structured interviews are applied measuring depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, measuring attitudes, measuring cognitive styles and perception styles. I would like to see a combination of the qualitative and the quantitative methods in the Irish situation.

I think we also need to be evaluating the sex education programmes. In the document Breda will give you, you will see the difficulties but I do believe that we have to find techniques for evaluating the different models of sex education. In fact, what is striking, reading the literature on it, is how many different models are used. It's not just simply teaching people to be confident and to negotiate what they do in a particular way. There are about 20 different models of sex education. I think we should reflect on models we might use and how we evaluate them.

In relation to women seeking abortion and having abortions and women not seeking abortions, I do believe that we need ongoing and detailed research if we are to equip people to address these problems in the future.

Chairman: Thank you very much for your presentation and for the obvious reflection you have put into your submission to us here today.

Deputy J. O'Keeffe: I am delighted that you came this morning.

Professor Casey: Thank you.

Deputy J. O'Keeffe: I am hugely enthusiastic about an approach which advocates positive measures as an alternative to abortion. I suppose to a considerable degree our debates to date haven't focused on those areas but to a large degree I think your submissions get to the heart and core of what we are about because we do have abortion. You had a conference, "5,000 Too Many", in '98. This year, unfortunately, it will be 6,000 too many. I suppose the opening point I'd make to you is that I don't think there has been sufficient, adequate or indeed hardly any debate on the issues raised by you. I would hope that we would have a lot more.....that you might be rolling a stone down the hill that will gather a lot of debate behind it because I would say that some of the things you say are probably controversial in themselves, that there wouldn't be unanimity on the views that you present but that they certainly are focused on avenues which are alternatives to abortion and in which I would have to say very bluntly I am usually interested.

I wish to raise a couple of issues. On the question of adoption, you mentioned the resources that are needed. Have you any idea as to the kind of moneys that are at present available in that area and the kind of moneys that you believe would be needed to put into effect the approach that you are advocating?

Professor Casey: Deputy O'Keeffe, I wish I was an economist. I am not. I am afraid you'd have to do costings on that. We can do only so much for the committee. Seriously, I don't know but I do know that ----- Social workers tell me they are spending a lot of time doing contact tracing nowadays. These are groups who have given up placement completely in favour of contact tracing but who would, if they had the resources, be willing to do placement. It's that kind of situation I think we need to overcome.

Ms O'Brien: In relation to that, I can't give you figures either but I could say that I have been speaking to some of the adoption agencies - the few that are still doing placing - and they are saying that they are so overstrained by ----- I believe one of the agencies has a low call number and they actually could spend all their time on the telephone and all the other things such as ongoing practice which has become quite good in terms of maintaining links and maintaining contacts between birth parents and adoptive parents and adopted children are actually being squeezed as a result. I think the answer is significant additional resources.

Deputy J. O'Keeffe: On the question of counselling, what I gather from you and from personal knowledge is that it's very difficult for somebody to become a fully qualified counsellor. Is that the message -----

Ms O'Brien: That's right, yes.

Deputy J. O'Keeffe: Is it your view that in certain circumstances there isn't the need for the very high standards of qualifications that are laid down?

Ms O'Brien: I believe that there is absolutely a need for very high standards. I am just not sure that to go with the classic qualification ----- The IACT and the ICP are voluntary organisations. There is legislation coming before the Dáil about registration of certain professions but I believe counselling is not in the first tranche of ten - I am subject to correction on that but that's my understanding - because it is so difficult to look at the area of counselling and how to regulate it. My main point is that there are different types of counselling demanding different types of ability and that the classic counselling

qualification ----- I would be totally in favour of counsellors being accredited if they are going to do ongoing counselling and I would be totally in favour of crisis pregnancy counselling being seen as a specialism, as something for which people have to have specific qualifications, and that that would be taken into account and that the expertise of people would be taken into account when designing such a module.

Deputy J. O'Keeffe: Do I take it then that you are obviously in favour of proper standards -----

Ms O'Brien: Yes.

Deputy J. O'Keeffe: ----- but you feel that in different counselling sectors different standards should apply -----

Ms O'Brien: Absolutely.

Deputy J. O'Keeffe:-----that one needn't be a total expert, as it were, in bereavement counselling -----

Ms O'Brien: Exactly.

Deputy J. O'Keeffe: ----- to be a counsellor in pregnancy.

Professor Casey: They are quite different approaches. By definition, pregnancy counselling is brief, its short, it involves one, at most, two sessions, if one is lucky. Formal counselling - we'll call it typical Rogerian counselling - involves ten, 15 sessions with a contract drawn up at the beginning, set appointment times. Specific issues are looked at and examined in great depth. That's quite different from the requirements for crisis pregnancy counselling. Whilst one has to have training in crisis pregnancy counselling - that's essential and has I think been a problem in the past - I believe it has to be quite different from being a full blown, full practising counsellor.

Deputy J. O'Keeffe: My last point is on the area of contraception.

Ms O'Brien: It is probably the most controversial.

Deputy J. O'Keeffe: You have seen the Green Paper -----

Ms O'Brien: Yes.

Deputy J. O'Keeffe: There were a lot of submissions expressing concern at regional gaps in service provision and factors such as cost, availability, access and so on. To sum up your situation, are you inclined to recommend less emphasis or no emphasis on the contraception side or more emphasis on education which would lead people to delay being involved in intercourse? Where is the balance that you are suggesting here?

Ms O'Brien: As a matter of interest contraception was an integral part of the "5,000 Too Many" conference. Both Patricia and I are aware of the place of contraception. What I was saying simply was - anybody who is a parent here will be aware of this - when dealing with young people if you say "maybe" you have already lost.

Deputy McGennis: Have you ever tried saying no?

Ms O'Brien: It's very true but I actually believe that young people quite often are looking for boundaries. There have been some very interesting studies in relation to young people who have engaged in sexual intercourse at an early stage. One this year in the British medical journal----- The number of people who regret early engagement in sexual intercourse is huge whether or not they used a condom. In this particular study there was - surprisingly I would have thought - quite a high incidence of the use of contraception on first intercourse. It is particularly strong in young women and particularly strong under the age of 14. This regret is so strong that one researcher actually said that he felt that being forced or being pressured was the primary reason that girls under 14 were engaging in sexual intercourse. I think that with studies like that available to us we need to be presenting a strong message.

Obviously you also need to make young people aware of contraception but you need to make them aware of the totality of the reality of contraception. Children - and I use the word advisedly - have this idea that a condom is protection against everything. There are three ways of looking at contraception: one is the perfect use failure rate, in other words. if you do everything that you're supposed to do; second is the actual failure rate and there is a third statistic which relates to teenagers. There is an 18.4% failure rate in condom use among teenagers. I think that they need to know things like that. They need to know that, in a sense, a condom is not the answer to everything.

However, I believe that people should make informed decisions. I'd be very much in favour of teaching about contraception but with the emphasis, from every point of view, on delaying sexual activity - the Americans have an interesting term - until self-sufficiency, in other words, until you are independent and responsible for yourself, until you're ready to have a baby and all that. Contrary to what we might think, babies do not result from failed contraception. Babies result from sexual intercourse. That message needs to be put across very strongly.

Deputy J. O'Keeffe: You are presenting a dual message in a way, that it is all in a package of educational measures.

Ms O'Brien: I want to make it very clear that I'm not saying that I would suggest to young people "abstain from sexual activity and if you can't, use contraception" in that kind of black and white fashion. What I would be saying is that the positive message should be that it is possible and healthy to abstain from sexual activity and to make them aware of the reality of contraception as well. It's not giving a dual message in one sense; it's giving a very strong positive message. I think it's extraordinary that the United States have a drop of a year. Their figures are still very high. The average age for first sexual intercourse is 16 years and four months, which I think is young particularly in an Irish context and particularly with our legal situation. But it's a heck of an improvement in a sense on 15 years and four months. They have actually managed to turn it around.

I think it's possible that we could learn from what other countries are doing in that positive sense and not assume that all young people are madly desiring to be sexually active. Somebody who works in this area whom I'm very familiar with said to me that quite often it's quite sad to talk to young girls particularly about their sexual activity because for them it's not a particularly enjoyable process a lot of the time. That's sad. It should be an enjoyable experience. It should be something positive.

Chairman: At what age can we say "if you can't be good, be careful"?

Ms O'Brien: I don't know. Certainly the minimum is the legal. We cannot be advocating something that is not legal in the country. We've an extraordinary situation in the western world in that people in other cultures are married and mothers and fathers at such an earlier age. We have a very prolonged adolescence.

I think that there would be a lot more unanimity about people in their 20s being sexually active because they would have a degree more maturity. Now how do you present that to young people? Do you advocate that at 23 everyone should go out and lose their virginity? You have to give a very consistent message. I think a consistent message would be to be quite directive. If you receive a question in a classroom like, "what time should young people start having sex?", my response would be "you're too young". And here are the reasons why you are too young: if you're female, increased chances of cancer of the cervix, increased chances of chlamydia which can actually lead to infertility, and the fact that women still, in spite of everything, regard sex as an integral part of a relationship. Perhaps we should be educating boys to regard it that way as well. That was something I didn't come to. I think education of boys is very important.

Chairman: I was going to ask you next if you would tell males that as well as females. Of course you do. Do you need to elaborate on that?

Ms O'Brien: No.

Professor Casey: That is another aspect of the education, if I may just mention it. It seems that many unplanned and crisis pregnancies result from alcohol misuse. I think emphasising the role of alcohol in the education programmes is hugely, hugely important.

Ms O'Brien: To be fair, that's already being done in substance abuse programmes like "On My Own Two Feet". However, something interesting is emerging, again from the United States. The self-esteem model doesn't work fully. I can give you all the references for a thing called "Project Dare" which was a long-term US Government sponsored thing which was about self-esteem and enabling young people to say no to drugs and alcohol. They discovered that this increase in self-esteem may give them more confidence sometimes to make the wrong decisions. It actually helped them to negotiate with drug dealers. They were much more confident about approaching a total stranger.

The model I think is good is self-efficacy. It is a bit of a mouthful but what it means is that you concentrate on skills, the skills of refusal. Are you confident that in the situation you can find a way to do what you want to do, that you won't be subject to peer pressure? Bandura is the main researcher in this area and I think it is an interesting model. I think it's one we should be looking at. In a sense our relationships and sexuality education is in the schools, even though it hasn't been implemented everywhere. It would be interesting to research it, to build evaluation into the programmes. It is really important so that in ten years time we can say "well, this model didn't work either, let's try something else or this model works extremely well, we need to put more resources into it".

Deputy McManus: Thank you for coming here. The conference "5,000 Too Many" was ground breaking and I was honoured to participate in it. It just reinforces the difficulty about this issue that we are now at a figure of 6,000. However, it was an important conference in terms of highlighting the issue and breaking out of the illusion that somehow we did not have such thing as abortion.

I have no problems with your points regarding adoption, having a more positive approach to it and, indeed, in terms of delaying. To be fair to the Dutch, regardless of whether it was intentional, the effect of their work is that they have succeeded in delaying the age to some extent, certainly in comparison with Britain. It is an important aspect and it is important that we do the same.

However, I am still concerned that in your recommendations you do not include contraception. My own view is that it is part of the package and that it is wrong of us to isolate one aspect and take it out of the picture, particularly so when one reads the Evelyn Mahon research. It shows that many of the young women were not using contraception or were using it too late. In one case that struck me, fear seemed to be a large element in not using contraception - not being able to go to the doctor and not being able to talk to the parents. Another example was a girl saying that where it was a one night stand she did not feel confident enough about herself to be able to say they must use contraception. She could only do so when she knew the boy well. That attitude is extremely risky and must be faced up to.

I am concerned at the fact that this is the missing piece. Why have you done that?

Ms O'Brien: To clarify that, in the recommendations that went forward from the "5,000 Too Many" conference, the contraceptive aspect was an integral part of it. We selected four issues that we felt very confident about speaking about because of our interest or expertise in relation to that. I understand exactly where you're coming from. I would simply put to you that the research shows that it's not a panacea. My worry would be the idea that if you have perfect contraceptive use, if you have lack of fear, if you have assertive behaviour that you then have no abortion problem. I don't think the research shows that anywhere and is actually quite conclusive in the other direction, including research from family planning organisations. That would be my concern about it.

Deputy McManus: I accept that fully. However, is it not a very important part of the measures to combat the high level of abortion? It is not as if contraceptives are available uniformly everywhere, quite apart from their efficacy. I suspect that if men got pregnant, we would have perfect contraceptives. However, allowing for the imperfections and the fact that they do not always work, they are not always available.

Ms O'Brien: It's extraordinary really. There is an ONS - office of national statistics - study in Britain which I was quite stunned at. In some senses we are similar and dissimilar to Britain. It showed a very interesting statistic. Among the highest risk age groups for abortion which would be 16 to 24 - that does not mean older women don't have them, they do and they are a very particular case - it showed that young people had an extraordinarily high level of knowledge of contraception, an extraordinarily high level of usage of contraception but they did not have any knowledge worth speaking about of, say, a disease like chlamydia. That would be one of my concerns, Deputy McManus, that this would be part of it, that if we're going to emphasise this, we emphasise the whole story about it and that we allow people to make informed choices on that level.

I don't think we're that far apart actually in that sense, but I feel that out of respect for

people - I suppose I'm coming very much from my hat as an educator and talking about young people - and I think that the mixed message, you know, "well, here you are, don't do it, but if you can't, you know, whatever", doesn't work. Young people quite often like boundaries. They kick against those boundaries but some young people find them extremely reassuring.

I'm sure you've all had the experience of a young person who says on the 'phone, "my mother won't let me". It's a great protective thing and the same with the studies that show that parental disapproval and parental communication are the two key things for people to delay sexual activity.

Professor Casey: In fact, one of the features of the Dutch model is the involvement of parents in the delivery of sex education. That seems not to be a feature of our RSE. My eldest boy has just started doing it and I certainly haven't been involved in any of it, although he gets it from me subsequently, but not as part of the RSE programme. That's something that should be incorporated in any future models, I think, that parents would be empowered, would be trained, would be taught how to discuss sex with their children because parents find it extraordinarily difficult, very, very difficult.

Chairman: I'd understood the practice was that parents were written to and consent was given.

Professor Casey: No, I do not mean in that way. They give consent but I mean actually engaging in discussion with children about sex, different aspects of it, values, what's right, what's wrong, different approaches to the issue. That doesn't happen at all.

Ms O'Brien: As part of the planning for RSE, all parents were supposed to be consulted and involved in producing the school policy. Now, that has been very, very patchy

Professor Casey: The actual delivery of the programme, I believe, should involve parents a lot more.

Ms O'Brien: Yes, there are two aspects to it.

Deputy McManus: In the programme in Holland, everybody got engaged in it.

Professor Casey: Yes.

Ms O'Brien: Yes, and that's the key in the approach they're taking in the United States. Everybody from parents to youth leaders to community groups.

Professor Casey: And they have older children involved as well.

Deputy McManus: It's called ganging up on them.

Chairman: You don't just write to parents.

Ms O'Brien: No, and you might even have parents involved in the delivery

Chairman: You encourage them to get involved

Ms O'Brien: One model that works quite well is older teenagers working as role models for younger teenagers. You could have parents involved in the training of older teenagers. It would be quite unnerving to see your mammy arriving into the classroom to deliver the RSE, but it would be an entirely different thing to have, you know, an involvement, say, in weekend training workshops for the ones who have just gone on to college or gone to work who would come back in.

Deputy McManus: Thanks.

Deputy McGennis: I'd like to thank both of you for being here today and for expanding on, I've an idea of your views already. I will just go through the four headings that you mention. Promoting positive images of motherhood, I think that's a very good suggestion. I think it's one that we certainly should look at very seriously, you know, of getting a message to somebody who's in a crisis pregnancy because I've a feeling there actually aren't a lot of messages getting to women in crisis pregnancies.

I think what we've discovered from medial evidence we got as well is that women in crisis pregnancies who decide to go for abortion seldom, if ever, will go to a hospital. It's to an agency they will go so, you know, there's a need to get this, to get a message across. There's always the risk, of course, then that those who don't like messages going out at all will object and will see this as something which maybe glamorises lone parenthood or, you know, highlights the fact or even suggests that there is the option of abortion. So, we'll always be, I think, battling against that.

On the issue of adoption, I would have great concerns also about the drop in the number of children who are available for adoption and I've made that known for a number of years. I had occasion with a friend of my daughter's, a very young girl - they were both 14 - who gave birth to her first child. When I went to visit the mum, and it wasn't to deal with lone parents allowance or anything like that because the mother was adamant that they were going to support her and she was going back to work and she wasn't getting her book as she titled it, but I just asked, during the course of visiting and seeing the baby and the very young mother, if the social worker in the hospital - I'm presuming that she has to have had a social worker at that age - had mentioned alternatives and I meant specifically adoption.

The grandmother's reaction was furious, we are not----- there was no question of giving our baby away. It was not an issue which was being discussed by social workers in maternity hospitals. It's maybe being discussed at agency level but it is not, to my knowledge, something that is discussed. Now maybe there's a reason for that, maybe it's that the social workers feel that they are being directive and if they open their mouth at all, that they're going to be in difficulties. I understand that but certainly it is, I think, not happening and it's something that needs to be looked at.

You mentioned that quite a lot of the adoption agencies are spending a considerable amount of time on the tracing aspects and that is, obviously, not to catch up with difficulties but there have been difficulties associated with the older adoption scene. I'm not absolutely sure now that even if we were to decide, or if there was a great movement towards adoption, that it is the older adoption agencies or the adoption agencies that are in place at the moment would be the ones that we go. I think there's a credibility problem there.

Professor Casey: May I comment on that very point? Pardon me for interrupting you. I believe there is a strong case to be made for allowing charities and other outside adoption agencies, accredited agencies, to become involved in adoption in the future. I know at the moment there are only a few agencies, mainly through health boards, but I think there is a very good case to be made for expanding the numbers of agencies involved in adoption for the reason that you mentioned, because the current agencies, I think, don't have ----- they have a credibility factor.

Deputy McGennis: That's right.

Ms O'Brien: If I might just comment quickly on that, I think there might be a slight degree of unfairness in the perception because the practice has changed so much. I would feel that we are actually to the forefront of good practice now.

Professor Casey: Now, yes.

Ms O'Brien: In a sense, the people who are presently engaged in it are paying for what people did in the 1950s and 1960s.

Professor Casey: Exactly, yes.

Ms O'Brien: I think it would be unfair to penalise people who have pioneered in a sense a more modern approach, a more open approach, by saying that they couldn't be subsequently involved in adoption. It's just a comment.

Deputy McGennis: Yes, I understand exactly what you're saying but, unfortunately, the good practice which exists now is not, you know, the one that's getting attention. Mind you, there was very good practice in the 1940s and 1950s and thousands and thousands and thousands of couples had children placed with them and, you know, children were delighted to have been in that circumstance. It worked out very well, but it is the unfortunate cases, obviously, that get the attention.

Just on the kind of adoption situation that we have at the moment, you mentioned the Law Reform Commission report. I was involved with that with a number of groups. You can put on the record that the Adoptive Parents Association felt that they were actually misrepresented in the final report because they did not say that they would place a veto on contact registers. They did not suggest a passive contact register. I told them to ensure that that appears in the final report because that is not their position and it is not the way they would want themselves represented.

Professor Casey: I spoke with them last night in fact.

Deputy McGennis: Yes. They are very angry about it. On the counselling issue, I can understand why you're saying that it's probably ----- I think what the Eastern Health Board did, to be fair to them, was an absolute knee jerk reaction to something which was very wrong, should never have happened and, because somebody feels passionately in one area or another does not in any way, you know, condone or accept that they should have been doing what they were doing. It was just wrong, but I think maybe we need to make the case that there are different types of counselling. I mean I have an involvement with Parent Line and if you were to apply those criteria, then Parent Line would find themselves totally devoid of counsellors. We need to-----

Professor Casey: The Samaritans would go with that line.

Deputy McGennis: Exactly, but I think we have to ensure that whatever it is, it certainly isn't, it doesn't result in what happened in the most recent cases.

On the relationships and sexuality education, I think you could nearly subtitle that, then you're maybe promoting a positive image of teenage boys and girls because I think the image of boys and girls, of teenagers particularly, is very skewed. I say that as a parent of two - they're gone beyond teenage, but one that is - but with a lot of involvement, as I'm sure all the public representatives have here, with very young women who find themselves in maybe not crisis pregnancies, but find themselves as unmarried mothers. I don't know what their image of themselves is and I would find myself asking the most, you know, well, probably out of ---- the way, unacceptable questions of these young women who have had maybe a second child. It's not the questions that they're expecting to be asked. It is younger we're seeing, although the statistics are saying it's moving a wee bit back.

I understand what you're saying about delaying sexuality. Can I put that in the context of the issue we were talking about a moment ago in relation to adoption? There was certainly a delaying of sexual activity in the 1940s and 1950s on pain of ex-communication, the fires of hell and just absolute fear, but we still had a huge number of unplanned pregnancies. They didn't always end up as unmarried mothers because I think the book which you have there suggests that there was the phenomenon of shotgun weddings. So, while we had that----- okay, fear may have been the motivation but whether it's self-esteem or if it's empowering people to make decisions now, it amounts to the same thing. We still had very high numbers of women ending up in, you know, crisis pregnancies which saw them either going to England to have their babies there and adopted or coming to Dublin or the Magdalene Laundries. I don't know that, you know, that argument in itself is going to stand up because certainly what you faced as a result of becoming active sexually in the 1940s and 1950s in Ireland would not have, you know, in any way encouraged anyone, a woman, to become pregnant. It happened and it happened in large numbers, so I'm just a wee bit concerned.

I'm not saying that it's not something you should do but I would say again that as a mother I know that saying to my three children, you must not do that and do not do that, would be absolutely counter-productive. I would try to do both and say listen, you know, certainly, what you're saying, don't end up in a situation where being involved in a sexual relationship means nothing but if you are, then you want to make sure and I think that, you know, if you are going to have a baby that it's when you're ready to support it. I'm not sure about the American model of this. It may be very focused on a particular area.

I thank you very much for the statistics you gave about the Netherlands because I thought we were heading to the Netherlands to be educated. You learn something every week. The fact that you've said that, in fact, abortions are not categorised as abortions up to eight weeks and that it's ------

Ms O'Brien: In doctors' surgeries.

Deputy McGennis: ---- that puts a whole different slant on the statistics for that country. But I would say, just to back up the last point, I think what we probably do see there is a greater involvement by parents in discussions. I don't know what your children would feel if you went into the local community school tomorrow to be a peer educator. I think they would die on the spot. You know, with one of them, I'm not allowed to even mention the word. You are certainly very much more open. But it is something that is very delicate.

Certainly, in the book on crisis pregnancies again you see both ends of the spectrum. People where, you know, a family were totally anti-abortion and because of fear of being found out or discussing the issue you found somebody going to have an abortion, which seems to be the worst thing in the world. Again, because it was an issue that was never discussed at home and, you know, you just didn't talk about it. The same ignorance, you know, at both ends of the spectrum leads to that. But, I think, maybe as parents we need to be taught, you know, when to hold back but how to approach the subject. Some kids are not happy at all or comfortable with their parents doing it. As I say, I thank them , Chairperson, for the presentation.

Senator O'Dowd: I welcome your contribution here this morning. I found it very useful and very helpful. Just a couple of things that concern me basically and I very much laud your conference for producing the abortion leaflet providing real alternatives. One of the issues I face as a public representative, a lot of young mothers under 18 coming to me looking for advice. It goes back to your counselling and so on. An awful lot of mothers who choose to be single mums and to have their babies are left that they have no proper counselling services after they've had the child. I've been very critical of health boards that when you refer them to social workers they're actually too busy dealing with sexual abuse cases or whatever. I don't know have you or do you intend to do any research into that area into increasing and getting better support services for mothers who have decided to keep their children and are living alone?

The other issue that I feel and it's part of what Marian was saying there that with the breakdown in family life and the old traditional family or community, as we know it. I find an increasing number of young people and, indeed, their parents don't know what to do or don't know how to deal with those issues. They're completely at a loss. When they come to public representatives, we're not skilled but we have contacts and we can help them as much as we can. One of the biggest things we do is actually listen to them. There is nobody listening to these people out there. I don't know if you've any views on that.

Finally, what I want to say is that where people make the choice when they are pregnant to have their child, you know, I think that's what we all want and we reduce abortion that way. But there's a significant amount of support needed for single mothers out there when they have one and, indeed, often when they have their second child, they come up against an awful lot of criticism, an awful lot of prejudice. I think that everybody needs to put a lot more effort into that. I'd be happy to have your views on those issues.

Ms O'Brien: I agree completely with you in what you're saying. But can I make a point which I think is very important? An elected representative actually challenged me very severely on what I was saying about, you know, images of motherhood and said what we really need to do is to go back a step further into the circumstances which makes it appear that in a sense your best option is having a small baby when you're not much more than a child yourself. The significant thing that I think has emerged from the study is that having a future is actually a great disincentive, having educational prospects, job prospects and so on. It's actually a slightly different question to the abortion question because in the cohort that we're talking about abortion is not really an option but it's a huge question. I don't think you could tackle these two things independently of each other.

That's again why intervention at an early age, as some of it is happening very positively from the Department of Education in terms of early start education and so on. But you actually need to go back a step further and to say why does, and this is again research - I think Professor Casey will agree with me - why does somebody in a sense choose, because we have to face up to the fact that sometimes 14 year olds choose to get pregnant? Why would that seem to them to be in a sense a career option and why would that seem to convey a sense of self-esteem and a sense of worth and what can we do to intervene at an earlier stage? I think that would get across some of the difficulties that Deputy McGennis referred to there in relation to people saying you're glamourising lone parenthood. I would be very conscious that we should not do that.

We do not want to increase, inadvertently by trying to reduce the numbers of those seeking abortion, the numbers of lone parents because, unfortunately, the reality is that it's an indicator of poverty, it's an indicator for long-term dysfunction. So there's a very delicate balancing act here but I think it's one that could be tackled. We have the resources, we have the research and the people capable of doing it. What you need is an integrated policy, something similar to the poverty proofing that things have to go through. You have to look at the impact on family structure, on things like teen pregnancy and older age pregnancy, of everything that we do, you know, and particularly everything that legislators do.

Professor Casey: Another related point in relation to, you know, resources and helping single mothers, some people say that we should stop welfare payments. In fact, they have stopped welfare payments in the United States. I want to put it on the record that we do not support that. We do not believe in penalising women who become pregnant and choose to continue the pregnancy and have their babies. We do not support that measure. I know it's happening in the United States. I understand it's being considered in Britain but we would consider that cruel. Instead, we have to, at an educational level, and the research demonstrates the effect of it, talk to young teenagers about the future, offer them prospects, educational prospects, career prospects, and that combined with the educational package seems to be one of the components of an effective sex education programme.

Ms O'Brien: I suppose in a sense, and I don't intend at all to be flippant about this, the answer to crisis pregnancy is that people do not get pregnant and that we should be working towards that, I think, as a solution and that as a society we would work together to try and do everything. In a sense it's something that needs to be attacked on all fronts at once. Also, as legislators, you're very used to hearing there's greater co-ordination between Departments. You know, that territories would not be quite so jealously guarded perhaps.

Senator O'Donovan: I will be brief, just a couple of questions. First, I welcome you. I've been listening to your interesting submissions and comments. On the question of adoption, is it not the fact - maybe I'll address this to Professor Casey - that what happened basically in around the late 1970s and early 1980s I'd say the whole, if you want to put this, I'm not saying this in any way derogatory, raw material dried up? In other words, there came to a stage that there were little or no babies for adoption and that has actually broadened for a number of reasons, particularly, I suppose, there was a seismic shift whereby pregnant women were prepared to have their baby and rear their babies which, maybe in the early 1960s, there was a stigma attached to that and that we've shifted in that direction. It's a shift I welcome and I welcome your comments also with regard to .... I couldn't see this State denying such people their social welfare benefits, you know. But isn't it a case that the raw material, so to speak, dried up?

I want to further my point in that there is a huge demand, in my view, out there by couples throughout this country for children for adoption. I had some experience of this myself. Furthermore, certain people waiting for ten, 12 or 15 years are frustrated because basically you have as good a chance of winning the lottery as getting a baby. That is a thing I've come across. Furthermore, there was age restriction, etc., brought in. As against that, to show the huge demand and desire I think approximately 400 couples went to Romania and adopted children - it may be more or less. I was out there myself and I saw the orphanages, etc. In what way now can we promote adoption when we've a sort of a shift of emphasis on the way young girls think? There is also, obviously, very few available even now.

Deputy McGennis: In reference to what Professor Casey said, we need to de-stigmatise adoption. Adoption is now considered to be an absolutely horrific handing away of a baby.

Professor Casey: Girls who contemplate adoption are made to seem abnormal. They are made to seem the mavericks.

Deputy McGennis: And will be for the rest of their lives.

Professor Casey: Women who come to me who have had abortions, and who have been traumatised by the abortions, will say to me "I could never have given up my baby for adoption, it was easier to kill my baby". They use that very dramatic language. I think we have to begin to de-stigmatise adoption.

There have been a number of television programmes and radio programmes devoted to it, but we need an advertising campaign, as I said earlier, similar to the citizen traveller one, that would perhaps focus partly on the general population but, more specifically, on the population who might be considering adoption, i.e. women who are pregnant with unplanned pregnancies. A leafleting and advertising campaign, similar to the positive images of motherhood one, would go very well. A combination of the positive images of motherhood and the adoption type advertisements could work very well on national television and independent television channels, and then using leaflets, posters and billboards as well. There is a huge job of work to do.

I am not suggesting for one moment that adoption will solve the problem totally because it will not - it will only be suitable for a number of women. but it could be very useful for a much greater number of women than it now is.

Ms O'Brien: One of the valuable things in the RSE resource material is that they actually discuss the issue of adoption very sensitively and well. But it would be wonderful if people like, say, the adoptive parents association, who are quite willing to go into schools and are quite willing to talk about it-----. I have had the very sad experience of a girl actually being afraid to admit she was adopted because of the negative reaction she got from her peers. They said, "Oh, that's terrible, your mother abandoned you", instead of seeing it as "your mother loved you so much that she was willing to part with you because she felt...". I think it can be done, though.

Senator O'Donovan: In regard to educational research, I made the point to one of the expert speakers that we are seen in this country as having, if not the best, one of the best educated young populations in the Western world. Is it the case that, whereas we are maybe leaps and bounds ahead of other countries or, at least, abreast of them in many ways, we are miles behind in regard to sex education, both in schools and at home?

Ms O'Brien: It is funny - I do not actually think we are. I think perhaps we under estimate ourselves. I do not have the research to hand, but I remember a study which showed that 67% of parents - which is quite a significant number of parents - were actually instigating sex education with their children themselves.

Perhaps we have a sort of national inferiority complex in many ways about many aspects. It is extraordinarily common to hear we have the highest abortion rate in Europe, which is simply not true at all. But it is so common to hear the idea that we are very poorly equipped in relation to sex education.

The RSE programme only came in a number of years ago. However, in the school in which I work, and in many other schools of which I am aware, relationships and sexuality education would have been part and parcel and responses would have been given to what young people were asking at a particular time.

There is always something to learn. Perhaps, what we need to learn from the Netherlands, if we are going to learn anything, is the strong family emphasis. We tend to think of the Netherlands in terms of Amsterdam, the coffee shops, the free availability of drugs and so on. There is actually still an extraordinarily strong Calvinist element to the Netherlands, which nobody is looking at, at all. Family structure and family loyalty are considered to be very important. That is not looked at as a factor. It is a very strong factor. I spoke to a researcher in Britain two days ago who is very much of the "Well, they are all going to be doing it so we better get them using condoms" mentality. She said she has been to five different conferences where they have been looking at the Netherlands. She said what has emerged out of all of them is the importance of family and the importance of looking at all the structures and all of this working together.

Senator O'Donovan: Speaking as a lay person, I feel, coming from a very rural part of Ireland-----

Ms O'Brien: As I do.

Senator O'Donovan: -----that not enough is being done in the schools. I know parents have to play a role, and I am a parent myself. However, I feel that sex education is a bit like civics, in that it is the class you can go to sleep in or doss. I honestly believe-----

Ms O'Brien: Nobody goes to sleep in sex education. I can guarantee that.

Senator O'Donovan: Fair enough, but the point I am trying to make is that it is not at the top of the agenda.

Ms O'Brien: Sure.

Senator O'Donovan: I still reckon we are lagging far behind. Maybe some of the other schools are not. However, I do not think we are doing enough in the schools.

Ms O'Brien: If I could make a quick point - it would not be appropriate for me, as a teacher, to be here and not to carp a little bit. When you mentioned civic, social and political education, they were introduced along with RSE as mandatory. There was supposed to be room found in the timetable for them, in a timetable that was already bursting at the seams. That is part of the difficulty. Also, one class a week - the ideal thing is a cross-curricular approach that is dealt with in science. Actually, some of the most frightening sex education happens in science, when they study things like sexually transmitted diseases. The young people come out weak at the knees after it. It happens in science, it happens in home education, it happens in religion, according to the ethos of the school. It happens in social, personal and health education, it happens in English class, in a sense. It is across the board. But it is very difficult to do that in a timetable which is bursting. Schools are being asked to do more and more to make up for the deficiencies of society, and there is only so much that can be done.

Deputy McGennis: I would be tempted to say teachers should be working longer hours.

Ms O'Brien: Perhaps we should scratch that from the record.

Chairman: I do not think we should ask the schools to solve all our problems. One view I got from you very clearly this morning is that our images of motherhood, adoption, pregnancy and sexual activity are very important. All of us, as legislators, parents and communicators, have a responsibility to see that appropriate messages go out in that area. To some extent, there are a lot of confused images today of these matters, and that does not help.

I will leave it at that, unless anybody has any questions. Thank you very much for your assistance.

Ms O'Brien: Thank you very much for listening.

The Joint Committee adjourned at 1.08 p.m. until 9 a.m. on Wednesday, 24 May 2000.

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