Ms Sarah Hughes:

Absolutely. One of the things we see is an increase not just in substance use but also in the struggle to manage substance use. Students who came of age during the pandemic and during lockdown are now that little bit older when trying substances for the first time and are doing so in different environments with different levels of peer pressure, and that kind of thing.

Within the student mental health services on campus we would not have capacity to deal with that at all so it would be referral into HSE services or into the wider NGO sector.