David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

To be clear, I absolutely understand that it is a big issue. Mental health well-being is a very big issue. I commend the fact that there are supports in place for students, but that is not my point. It is a really good initiative by universities and institutes of technology if that is what they are doing. However, we are looking at expenditure line by line and I see a pattern year on year that a lot of money is being spent on counsellors who work outside an institute. It is a huge amount of money. I imagine that money could be saved if more of the work was done in-house. The same is true for IT services. I do not understand why the institute would pay for website management if it has its own IT department. Why is that the case?

In terms of IT, we have experienced quite a high turnover of staff. That market is very buoyant. Some of those skills we are bringing in on a short-term basis just as cover. Some of the skills we are bringing in are specialist, for example, cloud computing and so on, so there is a variety of approach.