Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this very important issue. Mental health and mental well-being are important for both staff and clients. Many of the clients are very vulnerable and very stressed and can encounter staff in very difficult situations. Staff members need to be trained to deal with this and can often be subject to abuse and very bad experiences. I have heard of many such experiences while visiting Intreo offices and talking to staff members there. They also need to be trained in resilience, coping strategies how to deal with these issues. As the Deputy heard in my initial reply, much of this training is available, and thousands of staff members have participated in it already. However, I am conscious that I have 6,000 staff members and that the numbers I gave the Deputy would indicate that most have not participated. We do not have any plans to make such training compulsory at this stage, but I will talk with the HR people in my Department to see if there is more we can do in this area and if we can make sure that we have done everything reasonable to give staff members access to such training.

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