Mental health and counselling services for primary school pupils only continued until March 2023 due to orders from an education minister.
The Healthy Happy Minds programme was axed by the Department of Education on Thursday.
More than 19,000 children benefitted from the scheme in its first year.
But newly-published departmental papers reveal that Michelle McIlveen had issued two separate ministerial directions to keep the scheme going.
Ministerial directions are formal instructions from ministers telling their department to proceed with spending, despite objections from their senior civil servants.
According to Department of Education figures, over 10% of schoolchildren received counselling or therapies in the first school year the Healthy Happy Minds scheme ran from November 2021 to June 2022.
