Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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1210. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the additional supports being put in place to support student mental health and wellbeing including access to counselling and mental health education; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43382/25]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The Department of Education and Youth is committed to supporting the emotional wellbeing of our children. In 2023 the establishment of a €5m pilot programme of counselling and mental health supports for primary schools was announced. In Budget 2025, the pilot received additional funding.

Strand 1 is the provision of one-to-one counselling to support small numbers of children in primary schools in counties Cavan, Laois, Leitrim, Longford, Mayo, Monaghan and Tipperary. Panels of pre-approved private counsellors are in place to provide counselling and there are currently 45 counsellors available to support schools in these counties. In the 2023/24 school year, over 2,800 counselling sessions took place and 371 children availed of counselling provision. In the 2024/25 school year, over 5,600 counselling sessions have taken place and at least 653 children have availed of counselling provision. In October 2024, strand 1 of the pilot was extended to 61 urban DEIS primary schools in Dublin North and Dublin South-West. The schools included in the pilot have been identified by the Department of Education as supporting children from areas with some of the highest levels of disadvantage in the State.

Strand 2 of the pilot is the establishment of Education Wellbeing Teams to support 78 schools in cluster areas in Cork, Carlow, Dublin 7 and 16. To date, 20 Education Wellbeing Practitioners have been recruited. The focus of the support being 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/emerging need, using low-level therapeutically-informed approaches. The schools received a payment of €2,000 to promote and support wellbeing-focused initiatives among their school communities.

The pilot is currently being externally evaluated by the Centre for Effective Services. It is anticipated that an evaluation report will be completed by September 2025. Through this evaluation we are confident that we will gather valuable learning that will inform future policy and provision in this area.

In addition to the counselling pilot, my Department in partnership with Jigsaw have launched - a national programme of mental health and wellbeing resources and training for post-primary schools known as NEART. The programme complements the supports in schools such as the provision of guidance counselling and the work of NEPS, as well as other wellbeing programmes and initiatives including Student Support Team training.

A Wellbeing in Education platform on gov.ie brings together resources for school staff, students and parents to support wellbeing and resilience. This platform provides links to an extensive range of resources available to schools from the Department’s support services and agencies and the HSE and the Department of Health. Information and resources for school staff, students and parents are available on Gov.ie here

The portal includes the Catalogue of Resources which provides a non-exhaustive list of documents and resources that are provided by the Department of Education (DE), its agencies, support services, other Government Departments and their agencies and by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to assist the promotion of wellbeing across school communities.

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This resource can be used alongside the Directory of Teacher Professional Learning (TPL) which lists relevant TPL to support the wellbeing of all in the school communities. There are many professional learning opportunities available to support teachers and school leaders to engage with aspects of wellbeing. The TPL Wellbeing Directory provides an overview of the opportunities provided by the Department of Education (DE), its agencies, support services, other Government Departments and their agencies and includes information on how to access these supports.

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