Ms Cliodhna O'Neill:

Yes. I imagine the Deputy is familiar with the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, which provides supports in all schools. It has a programme of working with individual schools as children are identified and as supports are required for those children, as I know the Deputy is aware. Separate from that, the Minister launched a pilot programme of counselling with several strands this year in primary schools. That pilot is being run at present and the data from it will obviously be used to inform future developments in this area. At post-primary level, just in the last week, the Minister announced a call for tenders for a new programme of mental health supports at this level, so that is a new initiative to support in this space. With the well-being framework within schools, the Cineáltas programme, the NEPS programme and these two new additional programmes, we have a lot of the building blocks for a framework of support in place. We are aware, of course, that there are children who experience particular issues and anxieties and the primary counselling pilot will enable schools to identify those children, to refer them for a specific stream of counselling for an appropriate number of sessions, and then for them to be supported again, by the NEPS system and back in the school system.