Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am in Leinster House. This is my fourth online meeting today, so far, and coming in here to listen to the testimony of these guys is like a breath of fresh air for me. I thank Ms Howard for facilitating the meeting. I also thank LilyRose, Conor and Olga for their absolutely brilliant testimonies, and for giving a really good insight on how Covid has impacted children, and especially children of their age group. I am the father of three children. One child is in primary school, one is in secondary school and one is at third level education. I have seen, right across the spectrum, how Covid has affected children disproportionately. The children today have outlined really brilliantly how their routines were affected, how not having sports, arts, and choir, when they were needed, really affected them, along with missing family and not being able to see family members. I must say to LilyRose that her granny would be really proud of her today and the way she spoke. I thank her for sharing that with us.

All of the guests referred to mental health. I am Sinn Féin's spokesperson on mental health and I have met with groups from all ages across the spectrum from our older generations to teenagers, but I had not yet met a group the ages of our guests. I had just not had the opportunity to do so.

It is okay to be worried right now. It is a perfectly normal feeling to feel worried right now, and especially during a pandemic and during these restrictions. Hopefully, we would only ever have to experience this once in our lifetime and we will not have to go through it again.

I look forward to getting to the stage where Covid is an ancient story, as one of the guests said earlier. I got a good message of hope from the presentations. I also got a good message of not taking things for granted, like we used to. I train underage GAA club teams and we are back training now. Sometimes, if the weather was not great or when I was tired from work I would have gone out thinking "I have to train these guys again". Now I am skipping out the door just to get out to do the stuff I really love, and to engage with young people.

I have one specific question on mental health and then one other question. What would the representatives like to see provided in an age-appropriate way for them to be able to go and explore their feelings and emotions, based on what they have told us of their experience of Covid?