Madam, - I am amazed at the sense of shock that has greeted the publication of the Irish Study of Sexual Health and Relationships.
Do we genuinely think this problem has crept up overnight?
My only sexual education as a 17-year-old (10 years ago) consisted of a 40-minute religion class in which an embarrassed male teacher persuaded one pupil to tell us what his obviously "liberal" parents had told him a year previously.
In my subsequent training as a doctor, although we received numerous lectures on all forms of contraception and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) no emphasis was placed on overall sexual health and sexual education or on a realistic acceptance that Ireland now needed seriously to tackle these issues, like many other countries in the world.
Young people experiment, rightly or wrongly, without sexual constraints and if we continue to ignore their perceived needs and practices we will reap the consequences, including the further spread of STIs, increasing numbers of teenage pregnancies and greater numbers travelling to England for abortions as we once again fail to deal with our domestic problems.
We may all pretend to be shocked by this survey, but we ignore it to the detriment of our young people. - Yours, etc,
FERGUS McCARTHY, South Yarra, Melbourne, Australia.
Madam, - A huge thank-you to the sub-editor who came up with the photograph caption, "A couple's feet poking out from beneath a duvet" (The Irish Times,October 17th). It really hadn't been obvious to me until then.
Proof, surely, that The Irish Times is a newspaper of record. - Yours, etc,
CIARAN O'REILLY, Windsor Park, Belfast 9.