Ms Jean Manahan:

The Irish Council for Psychotherapy, ICP, has met the Irish College of General Practitioners and other groups on this issue. We have provided on our website a map of Ireland identifying the locations where psychotherapists are practising and detailing their specialism. Many of them will work with children but a number of them do not. I agree with Dr. Barry that regulation is helpful. The standard that the council upholds is uniform. A GP can access an ICP-accredited psychotherapist through our website. I recently asked my own GP what he would do in this scenario and he told me that as I have trained him well, he would refer to the ICP website, where, as I said, the location of services and their specialism is provided.