Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

I thank Deputy Burke for raising this matter. This is an important pilot programme that has been rolled out.

My Department is committed to supporting the emotional well-being of our children. In 2023, the establishment of a €5 million pilot programme of counselling and mental health supports for primary schools was announced. In budget 2025, the pilot received additional funding which has allowed it to continue into this year. It is broken up into two different strands.

Strand 1 is the provision of one-to-one counselling to support small numbers of children in schools. These are in counties Cavan, Laois, Leitrim, Longford, Mayo, Monaghan and Tipperary. We have panels of pre-approved private counsellors in place to provide counselling and there are currently 45 counsellors available. In the 2023-24 school year, more than 2,800 counselling sessions took place and 371 children – I am pleased to say - availed of counselling provision. In the 2024-25 school year, which has just finished, more than 5,600 counselling sessions took place and at least 653 children have availed of counselling provision. Again, it is really wonderful to see those numbers increase.

Strand 2 of the pilot is the establishment of education well-being teams to support 78 schools in cluster areas in Cork, Carlow, Dublin 7 and 16. To date, 20 education well-being practitioners have been recruited. Five education well-being practitioners provide weekly support to the 20 schools in the Cork strand 2 cluster. The focus of the support provided is on strengthening whole-school preventative approaches. This includes the provision of psycho-educational support for parents and teachers and the provision of early intervention on an individual and group basis to children with mild to emerging need using low-level therapeutically informed approaches. The schools received a payment of €2,000 to promote and support well-being-focused initiatives among their school communities.

The pilot is being externally evaluated. On strand 2 in particular, which applies to Cork, there has been really positive feedback from the schools, parents and children involved, giving support to the schools so they can support every single child. While the one-to-one counselling is really important here, there is positive feedback from the broader practitioner work that is happening.

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