Call to penalise websites that fail to curb bullying

SEVERE penalties should be imposed on websites which have failed to stop their pages being used by young people to bully their peers, guidance counsellors said yesterday.

The call to the Government to introduce fines came from Institute of Guidance Counsellors president Frank Mulvihill.

He warned cyber-bullying on social networking sites was a modern social evil and the regular occurrence of students reporting bullying on the internet was becoming intolerable.

“As we know from well-publicised cases, it has already had serious repercussions. Efforts by some website providers to introduce an anti-bullying service have failed miserably,” he said.

“It is time to introduce legislation which will impose heavy penalties on sites which allow such practices in this country,” Mr Mulvihill said.

There have been a number of cases of teenagers taking their own lives in the past two years, where it is claimed it was a result of bullying on websites.

The hateboard.com website was closed down a year ago after a woman reported her teenage Irish daughter’s suicide was linked with comments about her on the site. The same site was also being used as a forum for students at Dublin schools to write insulting and disparaging comments about other teenagers.

At the Institute of Guidance Counsellors annual conference, Mr Mulvihill also called for meaningful action to address the abuse of alcohol and drugs. He said the personal and social element of guidance counsellors’ work has begun to place huge demands on their time in recent years.

“We see the problems first-hand on a daily basis and it is time to act on the social problems of alcohol and drug abuse,” he said.

“We changed culture in charging for plastic bags and by banning smoking in the workplace. Let us be brave and act on the abuse of alcohol among our youth and impose stricter sanctions on those who insist on creating a drug culture in our society,” he said.

Mr Mulvihill presented Michael Ahern, Minister of State at the Department of Education, with the institute’s policy document on effective guidance and counselling services for second-level schools at yesterday’s event.

“A truly effective guidance service could be established in Ireland with proper resources and the benefits would be far-reaching. It would have numerous positive effects on the country’s socioeconomic development as well as addressing other matters such as the mental health of our young people,” he said.

Schools are entitled to a full-time guidance counsellor if they have more than 500 students but only 11 hours of guidance services a week if enrolment is below that. The institute is about to make proposals to the Department of Education to restore the ratio to return to the previous allocation of one guidance counsellor for every 250 students, which was in place until education cutbacks in the mid-1980s.

Mr Ahern commended the country’s guidance counsellors for their dedication, commitment and professionalism and said it is important the workforce of tomorrow is equipped with skills and attitudes needed to take advantage of opportunities that will exist in the future.