Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 6 July 2021

Joint Committee On Health

Impacts of Covid-19 on Youth Mental Health and Psychological Services: Discussion

Mr. Adam Chambers:

I could step in. It is very clear that it is very difficult for early career psychologists to get qualified. It is very clear that there is underemployment, in general, of psychologists. Part of what we are saying today is that we must look at the context where we have waiting lists with 10,000 people who are being told to wait two or three years. It does not make any sense for us to not be able to get qualified when so many people are crying out for support. As much as we have pointed out what is wrong in terms of trying to become a psychologist, serious urgency has to be put on the fact that it is not that we are crying out for ourselves to get qualified and get jobs. People have been waiting years and years for support. They are not going to get any better by us telling them to wait for years. We are here and we want to help, therefore, employ us. We have this serious bottleneck where we need to really come to terms with the fact that we are making things very difficult for psychology graduates. We have many people who need support and we really need to start putting these two things together.

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