THE Department of Education has emphasised that a free resource pack on sexual and emotional change during puberty, distributed by the multinational company, Procter and Gamble, is not part of the Relationships and Sexuality Education programme.
A senior official said yesterday it was "an entirely separate programme and not in any way endorsed by the Department". She said there had been phone calls and inquiries from teachers on RSE courses who had been confused by a letter sent to primary school principals offering the Procter and Gamble package "for your school's RSE programme".
Some people who had seen the pack, which includes separate booklets for girls, boys and parents and a short video, felt it was too explicit. They objected in particular to one chart which illustrated the "external female genitalia", said the official.
The letter to principals says the free programme materials will be "available, in class sets, in time for RSE classes in the September, 1997, school year in Ireland". It says the programme, called Changes, has been "successfully used to teach matters related to puberty and adolescence to millions of young people throughout Europe".
"The programme relates particularly strongly to the physiological aspects of the RSE syllabus, including self-acceptance, physical development, becoming an adult, feelings, emotions and personal hygiene.
The package also includes four sample sanitary towels made by Procter and Gamble. A company spokeswoman in Britain, Ms Hazel Detsiny, said yesterday that if Irish schools requested it, every girl in a class doing RSE would get a free sanitary towel.
She said there was no mention of sexual intercourse in the material, and stressed that the illustration featuring the female genital area was a diagram of the reproductive system, "like in a biology book".
In Britain, the programme was aimed at 11 and 12-year-olds in the first year of second level schools, because "that's when parents and teachers think they're ready for it". But she said the Irish education authorities had told them that "RSE includes this work in the last year of primary school".
Ms Detsiny said Procter and Gamble sent out the material free because "teenage girls are people who use sanitary protection and it would be stupid of us not to sample these girls", and because it was helpful to girls and their parents who find it embarrassing to talk about pubertal change.