Mr. Mark O'Flaherty:

Perhaps I can answer that because I did my master's degree in Belfast. I was studying with people who were all employed in the NHS service so it was a good chance to compare how things are done differently. There are probably a number of things we could learn from how it does things. One is funded master's degrees. Obviously, assistant psychologist positions are funded and assistant psychologist are more widely employed. At the moment, the HSE only uses them in its primary care child and adolescent services.

In the UK, they are employed across a variety of services, including disability and adult services. That is one issue.

I am not sure if the committee is familiar with Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, IAPT, which is a programme run by the NHS. It is a mental health service that provides low intensity but high-throughput interventions for anxiety, depression and those kinds of difficulties. As part of this service, treatment is offered by assistant psychologists, under supervising psychologists, working in communities. In terms of taxpayer money, it is a very effective utilisation of people at that level of their training.

One other thing we could learn from the UK is to have a centralised application system for doctorates. In the UK, there is a centralised application system. A person just applies to one body and all the universities look at the application and decide, whereas in Ireland €50 has to be paid to each university with every application so it is quite expensive.