James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

I appreciate the Deputy raising this important issue, as the mental health and well-being of our third level students is a matter of deep concern and ongoing priority for this Government. The Government and my Department remain committed to enhancing mental health supports across the sector. My Department has allocated a total of €32 million to support higher education institutions in meeting the mental health and well-being needs of students since 2020.

This funding supports institutions in directly meeting the needs of students through counselling services as well as delivering the national student mental health and suicide prevention framework. As autonomous institutions, the exact disbursement of the funding is a matter for each institution depending on its own prioritisation of needs. They are entitled to do this because they are independent from the perspectives of management and governance. They have been advised to distribute the funding in support of specific student-facing areas, such as the recruitment of additional student counsellors and assistant psychologists, head of service posts, training and awareness raising. We can offer advice, but they ultimately retain discretion over how the funding is allocated.

The majority of new posts created through this funding have been counsellors, reflecting the capacity-building phase of the implementation of the framework. Over recent years, there has been a mixture of core funding and once-off Covid support funding, but as of 2020, €5 million annually is being allocated on a recurrent, sustainable basis. I mentioned that over that time, €32 million has been allocated. Institutions can also draw resources from other areas within their overall Exchequer and other funding sources. A number of other funds are available to them, which I might return to later because there is quite a list. I will refer to those when I hear where the Deputy's next question is going.

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