There is a “void” of proper education around sex and consent in secondary school that needs to be addressed, according to one academic who spoke in the aftermath of the Ashling Murphy killing.

Elaine Healy Byrnes, an NUI Galway academic who has written a PhD on consent, says the Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) curriculum needs to be brought into “the 21st century” and long-awaited RSE reform should include requirements to teach pupils about consent and respect in relationships.

Part of the problem, she told the Irish Times, lies with the slow pace of the Catholic Church divestment of school patronage, leaving religious ethos to often clash with more “modern” approaches to teaching students about sex and relationships.

Meanwhile, Colm O’Connor, principal of Cork Educate Together secondary school, says the majority of secondary schools should be mixed, rather than single-sex.

“I’ve worked in single-sex and co-ed schools for a decade each, and there is no comparison in terms of gender relations,” Mr O’Connor says. “In co-ed schools empathy is easier to build as male, female and trans students learn about each other’s lives and challenges together,” he says.