Ireland’s School Counselling Programme Hampered by Staff Shortages
A national plan in Ireland aimed at providing one-to-one psychological counselling for primary school pupils has faced serious implementation challenges due to a shortage of mental health professionals. In the €5 million pilot programme launched by the government to address the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on children’s mental health, more than half of the counselling slots allocated to schools went unused.
The pilot programme, introduced in 2023 in selected schools across Cavan, Laois, Leitrim, Longford, Mayo, Monaghan, and Tipperary, was designed to provide individual counselling to children with mild to moderate mental health needs. However, according to an independent evaluation report, only 382 of the 789 counselling blocks made available to schools during the 2023–2024 period were used. Schools in rural areas, in particular, experienced significant difficulties in finding suitably qualified counsellors.
Efforts to address the problem, including offering higher fees to professionals working in rural areas and bringing in additional counsellors through external providers, did not fully resolve the shortage. In the second year of the pilot, more than 30 percent of the 1,101 available counselling blocks also remained unused. Nearly one-fifth of the school principals surveyed said they did not participate in the programme despite being eligible, with difficulties in finding a counsellor cited as the main reason. Although the report found that one-to-one counselling had positive effects on students and received strong support from both parents and teachers, it concluded that expanding the existing model nationwide would be difficult because of its high costs and intensive staffing requirements.