A parent against sex education being taught in national schools said it is not necessary because child abuse ‘only’ affects 20pc of children.

Rebecca McNamee of the group A Parents Right says that children’s innocence needs to be protected and that sex education goes too in-depth for young children.

The group is requesting that parents are briefed prior to the classes taking place so that they know what is being taught.

‘An awful lot of parents don’t know what is being delivered to the children,’ Ms McNamee said.

‘We do have some good examples of schools that give out information packs first but in other cases, the children are coming home and asking questions’.

Ms McNamee said that sexual activity is not for children and reminded the audience that the legal age for consent in Ireland is 17-years-old.

‘Sex education is for adults. Sex education is not for children,’ she said.

‘We need to keep adult conversation and adult content from children’s ears.

‘In national school, they do not need to know about sexual activity. A lot of parents who have contacted me said that they are not happy with children in national schools being taught sex education and consent in relation to sexual activity’.

TD Ruth Coppinger was also appearing on the show and said that sexual education is necessary in Irish primary schools as she believes children need to be aware of child abuse and how to know if someone is acting inappropriately.

‘[Solidarity] could see that there was a serious problem whereby many issues and facing young people wasn’t being dealt with in school,’ Ms Coppinger said.

‘The Stay Safe programme has been instrumental in alerting children to the potential of sexual abuse, which happens to children by the way’.

However, Ms McNamee dismissed the comments saying that child abuse doesn’t affect every child so not every child has to know about it.

‘We know that one in five children can be subjected to sexual abuse,’ Ms McNamee said.

‘You have the majority of children who may never ever be subjected to that situation.

‘Why would you want to put that scenario and those pictures in their heads?’

Deputy Coppinger said that her comments were ‘dangerous’ and that child abuse and sexual violence have been big issues in this country.

Ms McNamee was referring to available data which suggests that about one in five children in Europe is a victim of some form of sexual violence. This can be sexual abuse, child pornography, child prostitution, solicitation via Internet or sexually connoted mobbing by peers.



