Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Unfortunately, I cannot give the Deputy a set timeline for that. I spoke to the Minister for Education and Skills only yesterday on this issue. Essentially, what it means is that over a three year period up to the junior certificate, students will have to partake in 400 hours of wellness classes across a variety of different sections.

With regard to school resilience and Pieta House, at the moment Connecting for Life has a strong youth element to it. There is a pathfinder project set out to implement the youth aspect of it. What I will be introducing in the next 100 days on top of that is a youth mental health taskforce that will build on the pathfinder project and specifically focus on education at an early stage. The problem that we face is that many mental health problems manifest themselves much earlier than we feel comfortable talking about. We need to implement some sort of educational programme at a primary school level. There will also be a second dimension to that taskforce which will involve non-political, non-departmental individuals who are currently working and have a keen interest in advancing our services. Programmes, such as the school resilience programme, will be taking from what is best practice, what is out there and how we can best implement it together.

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