Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree and am an open to new thinking. We are doing an audit of all that is done in the well-being and mental health area within the Department. That includes not just the SPHE and the new well-being programme but also the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, the restoration of guidance counsellors and so on. We are very keen to see whether we can use the resources in a more strategic way. I would be happy to see the development of partnerships with providers who could develop and deliver programmes in a better way. We do need to provide some way of establishing that the standard to which those outsiders deliver programmes is consistent with the expectations of our inspectorate and so on. That might need some thought. School leaders do have discretion but perhaps we could support leaders in programming this work and identifying useful partners in the community that could make them more effective.

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