Barry Ward (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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138. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if his attention has been drawn to extensive waiting lists for mental health supports in third level institutions; the actions he will take to address these delays; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36979/25]

James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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Mental health and wellbeing of our third-level students is an ongoing priority for this Government and my Department and I remain committed to enhancing mental health supports across the sector.

My Department has allocated a total of nearly €32 million to support higher education institutions in meeting the mental health and wellbeing needs of students since 2020. I am pleased to indicate that from 2025, €5 million annually is being allocated on a recurrent, sustainable basis to mental health initiatives. As autonomous bodies, institutions can also allocate resources to this area from within their overall Exchequer and other funding sources.

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 their own prioritisation of needs. They have been advised to distribute it in support of specific student-facing areas, such as recruitment of additional Student Counsellors and assistant psychologists, head of service posts, training and awareness-raising.

The majority of new posts created through this funding have been counsellors, reflecting the capacity building phase of the implementation of the Framework.

The funding also supports a range of national and institutional projects. Examples include:

• the National Student Counselling Database Implementation Project which will facilitate the identification of trends in the mental health needs of students attending student counselling services and identify areas that need attention;
• TogetherAll – a 24/7 peer support platform;
• Support for the work of the Psychological Counsellors in Higher Education Ireland;
• Co-ordination of research on suicide and self-harm;
• development of a screening tool for selecting the most appropriate person-centred intervention for students with mental health presentations, as well as tracking the wellbeing outcomes of the students who engage with their institution’s student support service
• development of a national health and wellbeing assessment tool to enable institutions to implement and progress the Healthy Campus Charter and Framework.