Ms Marina Dillon:

I will come in on that. I do not know if the Deputy recalls that I sent him a video on a similar system that was set up in Roscommon. It was a pilot project called access to psychology services Ireland, APSI, and it worked very well for participants. There were no waiting lists, people were taken in off the street and there was no delay with referrals and all of that. Someone could walk in off the street and be seen to. The way it worked was that five assistant psychologists worked under the supervision of one senior psychologist. Normally, a senior is needed to supervise at that level. He supervised these five individuals, the flow was great and the feedback from clients was very good. I sent the committee the video but I do not know if members got to watch it. It is something that could easily be rolled out nationwide.

There is no shortage of assistant psychologists. However, there may be a shortage at the level of seniors unless there is an agreement on staff grade psychologists supervising assistant psychologists. That could be a barrier. To be honest, the lack of seniors is a problem anyhow, even when it comes to supervising trainees. Not only that, it is not mandatory for a senior to supervise trainees. It is voluntary. It could be a case that one year a senior will supervise a trainee but it may not suit him or her the next year or he or she might be unavailable and, therefore, there is no place on a particular site for a trainee. That is probably worth bearing in mind.

There is another role in England called the psychological wellbeing practitioner, PWP. As far as I understand, it is a permanent role to do with what Mr. O'Flaherty talked about, which is the low-level CBT-based approach. A PWP deals with the earlier stages of anxiety and depression and, ideally, nips it in the bud or catches it in time so there is less delay. We need to roll that out in the community so there are less barriers to going in. To be honest, I am all for working hand-in-hand with the doctor on the ground, which means you either turn left for the GP or right for the psychologist. That is how it should be done in future but that is for another day because I do not know how long that would take to set up.