Ms Jean Manahan:

The Deputy asked about the snapshot and the recruitment. That was a small survey we did because we were continually being told by our psychotherapists about the uneven recruitment practices around the country for posts within the HSE or Counselling in Primary Care, CIPC. We spoke with HSE officials and we had a number of meetings since last autumn where we mentioned this data. Steps have been taken to ensure recruitment agencies to which this has been outsourced have received the message to, at a very minimum, reply to people and to ensure standards of recruitment are uniform. We were finding that in the west of Ireland there was one standard but another somewhere else.

Another issue has been the HSE moratorium, which has been lifted. It also only recruits under certain titles and, therefore, regulation will help with this. The title of "psychotherapist" will exist and the HSE will use that title in time. It is recruiting additional posts but it is still not using the title "psychotherapist"; it is using the title "psychological therapies". It is an evolving process but we were trying to get at the recruitment processes being more uniform. That is being dealt with. Ms Murphy can speak to proper regulation.

If anyone can practise psychotherapy, where people are in a vulnerable situation, the openness for abuse be it financial, sexual, or emotional, is there in the absence of regulation, and without a proper complaints procedure. The Health and Social Care Professionals Council, CORU, will eventually take over complaints. At the moment it is the psychotherapeutic modalities that look after complaints. Our colleagues in the UK took a different approach but our country is so small in that colleagues are having to examine other colleagues' behaviour, or ethical standards etc. Ms Murphy may wish to say something about this.