Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy O'Sullivan for his three questions and those topics have been very much on my mind in the past 24 hours. Starting with the mental health supports, I must concede that I am a little torn on this issue. I want to do two things. First, I want to give the individual institutions maximum discretion. For example, if a really good idea is conceived in University College Cork, UCC, and the students and staff get together and devise a scenario regarding what they believe would happen if a certain approach was implemented, then I want to allow them the discretion and flexibility to come up with such local innovative ways to look after mental health and well-being. Second, though, I want to ensure we do not just announce funding for mental health supports only for all of us to be asking what difference it has made in six or 12 months' time. Since this funding was approved in the past 24 hours, therefore, I have been discussing its allocation with my officials. We will, basically, allocate the money to the HEA and then that body will, in turn, apportion it to individual institutions.

Before that money leaves the HEA, I want to have a shared understanding regarding what we will view as a menu or metric of good outcomes from that spending. For example, after talking a great deal to students, I feel strongly about increasing the number of hours of availability of access to student mental health counsellors. I will put it like this, while we will not micro-manage this endeavour and we will allow the institutions the flexibility to get the best out of this funding by working with the student unions and, crucially, listening to the voices of students, we will also try to set out some parameters that will enable us to acquire an understanding of the outputs and outcomes of this funding allocation rather than just being aware that more money has been provided. I will be happy to keep the committee updated on this and I will write to it regarding this matter probably next week, once I have concluded my deliberations.

Moving on to antigen testing, I acknowledge the brilliance of the people working in our sector on this issue. I refer to Professors Breda Smyth, Kingston Mills, Paddy Mallon and Mary Horgan. I am sure that I have left out a load of names, but those are just some of the co-applicants for the pilot project which is now running in UCC, University College Dublin, UCD, the National University of Ireland, Galway, NUIG, and Trinity College Dublin, TCD. They have now become household names in respect of having provided expert advice throughout the pandemic. Two are members of the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, and one is working on the front line in St. Vincent's University Hospital. Therefore, these are people who really know what is going on when it comes to Covid-19.

I acknowledge and praise my successor in the role of Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, for setting up the expert advisory group in the Department of Health under the chairmanship of Professor Mary Horgan. I think that group was established the week before last and we wrote to it then to say we would need its expert advice in the context of a situation where we might reach a decision point in respect of our pilot project demonstrating benefits in using rapid testing. In that case, we might have to ask the expert group how we could best go about scaling up such an approach and how to undertake that endeavour. In fairness to the group, we wrote to it only in recent days, so I am not suggesting it is being in any way tardy with its response. However, I hope our request could be treated with a sense of urgency, given the level of importance the Government has attached to the reopening in the autumn. Therefore, I am certain we will engage with the expert group in a collaborative fashion.

On the vaccination programme, I sometimes get criticised for commenting on my former Department while also being asked about it frequently. I am delighted to see the acceleration of the vaccination programme. Huge credit should be given to the Department of Health, the Minister and the HSE for getting us to a position where we can accelerate the vaccination programme. However, let me be clear that being vaccinated is not a requirement to go to college in September. On the other hand, the more people we have vaccinated, the better we will be able to get on top of this virus and live more safely. Therefore, I have no doubt it will have a very positive impact.

I encourage students to get vaccinated, but I do not need to encourage them because there is great excitement and enthusiasm among students who want to get their lives back on track and to get vaccinated. We have not seen the sort of hesitancy that has been seen in some countries.

The next ask I have, and which I believe we all have, is to get the portal open as quickly as possible for 16 and 17-year-olds. Many of them, particularly 17-year-olds, could well end up being college students. We are also seeing a particular spike in cases among 16 and 17-year-olds and it would be great if we could see the portal open early in August for this age group. It is my expectation that will happen. To address Deputy O’Sullivan, the mood music around the vaccine programme, the acceleration of it and the fact that if one is 18 one can now access a Covid-19 AstraZeneca, Pfizer or Moderna vaccine through a pharmacy is great news. This should mean that we are on track to have the overwhelming majority of adults fully vaccinated in our country by the end of August. That has to be very helpful for the reopening of education in general.