Ms Marina Dillon:

I thank the Deputy for those questions, they are very relevant. Back in the day, say more than 15 years ago, educational psychology and counselling psychology did not require a doctorate, it would have been master's level then. The standard route everyone was channelled through to work for the HSE was the clinical psychology route. Clinical psychology route was nearly associated with working for the HSE. That has changed radically. If someone wants to become a staff grade psychologist today in the HSE, they have a choice of getting on either a clinical psychology doctorate, a counselling psychology or an educational psychology doctorate. Any one of those three strands can get you into a staff grade post. It is the same recognition now. I applied for the counselling psychology doctorate but I also applied for the clinical psychology doctorate. I did not apply for the educational psychology doctorate because that was not my niche but I could have done so. We are coming in with the same qualifications across the board. It is becoming quite standardised. That is not ideal. We do not want that either. We do not want only to be in a position to work for the HSE. The way we are trained, we can work in other areas such as the prison services, in an array of private hospitals and all sorts of other areas, as can the others.

There is a lot of flexibility. The training is in-depth across the board. It is at a very high level. The main difference, having explored it, is that apparently a national psychology placement office, the NPPO, should have been set up some years ago. It is within its remit to fund all doctoral psychology courses. Ideally, we should be brought up to speed once that opens. We sent in numerous parliamentary questions over the years but we still do not know the cause of the delay. We are waiting on that office to be established. I believe it is under Dr. Colm Henry's remit to set that up. Perhaps he is the person to talk to on that. We had it in mind to reach out to him but if the sub-committee can do that for us, so much the better. Those are the differences.