Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and thank Senator Garvey for all her work on this issue. I second the motion. It was great to meet with the Institute of Guidance Counsellors this morning and with Jigsaw. One thing that stood out for me was the fact the nature of youth is changing and has changed. We were in a very different position a couple of decades ago. The Government has an obligation to move with that. One thing Jigsaw said to us this morning was that adolescence is happening earlier because of the complexity of life. Some of that is down to social media but it is also down to a host of other things. One young person who appeared before the Oireachtas Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science spoke about the very real anxiety about climate change. That is a new reality for young people. That sense of uncertainty that was brought about by Covid and war is experienced most by young people. The other really interesting point is that people are reaching adulthood later than they did a couple of decades ago, so there is this very long period in somebody's life where he or she is going through growth, which is as much psychological as it is physical, and we must respond to that.

I have spoken to officials in the Department about the ongoing work on a task force on guidance counselling, which is great. We have two very straightforward asks here. Do they cost money? Yes they do, which is why it is also a budgetary ask, but it is a budgetary ask we can really get behind because, as Senator Garvey said, it makes sense. It is cost effective. I hate always saying that if we spend money here, we save money somewhere else, but that is the reality in this case. The Department of Health and Social Care in the UK estimated that targeted therapeutic interventions - early intervention - in a school would cost £229 per person but would derive £7,252 in terms of a lifetime benefit for the state. Financially it stacks up.

I will not go into the actual asks because Senator Garvey has done that very well. I am a member of the Oireachtas Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and Green Party spokesperson on education. The committee has produced three reports. We produced one on the impact of Covid-19, one on school buddying and its impact on mental health, and one this year on mental health supports in schools and tertiary education. All the reports mention guidance counselling because all the witnesses who appeared before the committee, from the Irish Second-Level Students' Union to teachers' unions to principals to teachers to guidance counsellors to psychological services, told us we need to move in a different direction.

It is important the Minister of State is here and that the Minister met with Senator Garvey earlier today and with the guidance counsellors and Jigsaw. I feel the Minister is committed to this, which is a very good step in the right direction. The role of the guidance counsellor has changed significantly and this means that along with this, we need to put in place something around continuing professional development. We need to recognise it is not just about psychological services but about being a trusted adult to whom a young person can turn. What I have seen in schools in Galway is that they are very creative about how they do that. If there is an instance in a classroom where a young person is suffering, they think outside the box and say this young person does not want to put their hand up to say they are really suffering and having a very hard time. They confide in the guidance counsellor, who then engages with the class teacher and asks what can be done. Do they move everyone around in the class so that the person with the problem is not identified whereas actually they are just doing the reshuffle so that bullying does not continue? That is where young people are.

It cannot be a service that is outside school. I do not believe it can be. Services outside school are great when it gets beyond that early intervention stage, but certainly in the early stages it has to be that network created within a school. At the moment, there are not enough hours to cover that. There are not enough hours for one-to-one intervention with young people. There are not enough hours for all of the other work. There is a discrepancy between DEIS and non-DEIS schools. It could be argued that there should be a different ratio for DEIS and non-DEIS schools, but when I spoke to guidance counsellors, they told me that in DEIS schools, they get home school community liaison whereas non-DEIS schools do not get it, so who ends up ringing the home every day on school refusal, which has become a significant issue since the pandemic? It is the guidance counsellor, and yet he or she is on fewer hours in a non-DEIS school.

All round, we must figure this out and I delighted the Department is taking this seriously and saying it needs to increase the number of hours. However, we also need to put all the wraparound services in place so the school can manage regardless of the type of school and background - rural, regional or urban. From what I heard this morning, they are all experiencing the same issues. There is no regional divide on this. Every school is struggling with this issue. I again commend Senator Garvey, her research team and the organisations I know have been a key part in developing this motion.