Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I too welcome the fifth and sixth year students who I met earlier. It is very important that they are here and I thank them for taking the time out. I saw the leaving certificate student in particular nodding to much of what Mr. Rolston was saying in regard to the anxiety and stress around the leaving certificate.

The remarkable thing in Ms Lynch's presentation was where she outlined that it was 1992 when we committed to promoting all of the children's rights, including the right to health, and that was ratified at the United Nations. None of these young people were born at that time and here we are, still talking about what we are going to do about it. When it was examined by the committee in 2016, I doubt if these young people had started secondary school, or perhaps they were just into it. I will talk about the pilot project shortly but we have had so many pilot projects that it really is disgraceful.

Even though we have been looking at this for a number of weeks in these sessions, some new issues have been thrown up today that I want to discuss with the witnesses. Ms Lynch talked about her work with parents, in particular the 3,000 parents attending the sessions each year. I ask her to provide further details on those sessions, where they are held and who they are delivered by. I will ask my questions first and then give Ms Lynch a chance to answer.

The other question I want to ask Ms Lynch is around the risks of piloting the single counselling interventions rather than the wraparound, whole-of-community approach. I too have concerns about this, in particular the way the money is allocated and the hours are bought in, and that is the job done. Here we will be in 15 or 20 years' time, again discussing the same issues around this. That is not only at primary or secondary level, but also at tertiary level. We all collectively need to guard against that. It has to be stopped because it is not a solution to what we need.

Ms McAlea spoke about the wider social issues, and housing was mentioned. With regard to the escalating housing challenges, I ask how that is impacting her work and how that has changed over the years. I will start with those questions, in particular the cost of the model that Ms McAlea is operating, how long it has been running and how we make sure it is mainstreamed and is not just contained there. I like the idea of having the cluster schools together, as we already have. I particularly like the idea of the secondary and the feeder primaries working together because there is then a history and a knowledge to be able to provide the supports that are needed and to target them in the way that is needed.