Mr. Paul Gilligan:

To be clear, I do not come from the education system. From our perspective at the tertiary or treatment end, we have seen significant and positive change in recent years. Mental health was never discussed in schools 20 years or 30 years ago. It is certainly there now, although I would not say it is integrated. The next step is to ensure mental health and well-being are a core focus for schools. That would address some of the issues in respect of exams and the focus thereon, to which reference was made earlier. Ultimately, for those under 13 it is about prevention. It is about working with parents and children together. It is very difficult. At times, there is a need to work directly with children, depending on the needs. The reason we are involved with the National Parents Council on this initiative, however, is that it needs to be community based and the best place to put a service in the community is in schools. The example shown by the school in Moyross, which I have seen, is tremendous simply because it is working at wellness, prevention and early intervention levels. Those are not the same things. It very often means that young people do not need to be referred on to more specialist services where there are serious difficulties.