Ms Sarah Hughes:

I thank the Deputy for her question. It is exceedingly disruptive. The money that was provided last year for Covid-19-related additional supports went unspent in a number of colleges for one of two reasons. First, because it was one-time funding, only a year's contract could be offered. There is a dearth of people who can apply for these jobs and that is not an attractive job posting. It is hard to fill a position like that. On top of that, many campuses do not have space to ad hoc hire two or three more counsellors for a year and then have them go off again. That was a situation we were faced with last year. Regarding the campus I referred to where there was standing room only on the waiting list, the head of counselling there told me they have two sessional staff they do not know if they can keep on beyond the end of November. If that happens, they have five staff, I think, so that is almost half of their staff gone. That has an obvious knock-on impact not just on the number of students that can be seen but also on the roll-out of things like the national suicide prevention framework. It does not have a specific staff member allocated for the roll-out, so it falls onto staff like counselling staff, who have to juggle their session loads and the roll-out of multiple frameworks at this stage. To sum up-----