Dr. Niall Muldoon:

In regard to Deputy Martin's questions, I am part of what is called a well-being for teachers and learners group and I work very closely with the Irish Primary Principals Network, the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, the Teaching Council and the National Parents Council. The whole essence of that is to try to create co-ordination and encouragement so that well-being becomes part of the culture of every school. It is about emotional awareness across teachers, students and parents, so it is the school community that needs to have a well-being culture. We are trying to promote that all of the time.

Within that, changes are needed. The Deputy asked whether the Department of Health and the Department of Education and Skills are working closely together. They are not working together closely enough. They both have targets within a number of strategies, such as the Healthy Ireland strategy, Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures and various other strategies. However, with regard to co-operating with each other, it is not as good as it could be and this is something that can be encouraged. We need teachers to be valued more than they are at present for the work they do. We now have a well-being curriculum for junior certificate but we still find this is taken on board by certain teachers who might have fewer hours filled, and it might not always be encouraged as the most important part of the work they do. There is a lot of work to be done in both the Department of Education and Skills and the Department of Health. Co-operation is vital and that is where we need to have things like a counselling service available across the two Departments, and perhaps across other Departments. They are starting to work on issues such as speech and language therapists being provided in schools, which is a case of co-operation between the two Departments. If we can do the same with regard to a counselling service, that could work, but there is a lot of work to be done. Even during the early years in primary school, we can start to encourage children, teachers and any of the professionals working with them to work on the emotional well-being and emotional vocabulary of children. This would make a huge difference into the future and give them resilience.