Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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767. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the amount of funding her Department has allocated to student counselling services at third level, for each of the past five years; and her Department's policy on supporting the provision of such services. [28462/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The position is that my Department allocates recurrent funding to the Higher Education Authority (HEA) for direct disbursement to the HEA designated higher education institutions. The HEA allocates this funding to the institutions and the internal disbursement of funding is then a matter for the individual institution. Third level institutions are autonomous and the responsibility for day to day operational affairs rests with the Governing Bodies and management staff of the institutions.

As the Deputy will be aware, students who qualify for free fees funding at third level are liable to pay the Student Contribution which includes funding towards student services including counselling services. A working group was set up by the HEA, at the request of my Department, to review and update the Framework of Good Practice for the provision of student services. This working group agreed that among others, welfare and guidance were areas to be included, together with counselling, as part of student services.

The HEA previously undertook a review of expenditure on student services in the sector and has advised that expenditure on counselling services amounted to some €5.55m in 2010/11, €5.84m in 2011/12 and €5.97m in 2012/13. Information is not yet available for the 2013/14 or 2014/15 academic year, however, the HEA is seeking the data from the institutions and my Department will arrange for details of the amount spent on counselling services in respect of those years to be forwarded to the Deputy.