Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are seeking to have a professional register for social care workers. We are cognisant that social care workers, by their nature, work in different aspects of healthcare and social care. They may work, for example, in disability services, addiction services or homeless services, and various other services. We are creating a professional register. I hear the Deputy and I do not disagree. Moving to regulate a profession in which the vast majority of members have been working for many years outside a regulated environment is not a perfect mapping. It is not like saying that all of our doctors have a medical degree and we can work like that. The grandfathering process is not perfect.

We have thousands of highly trained and experienced social care workers and we are moving to a regulated profession. We have to find a way to move them across. The original way, which is a reasonable proposal, is the competency-based exam, which goes exactly to the concerns the Deputy is raising. That is still one of the mechanisms. However, through the public consultation that took place from November, a conclusion was reached that if there was only the competency-based exams for those who have not reached level 7 – I think it is level 7 that is required for the courses – we would potentially lose thousands of high-quality, experienced social care workers. The question then arises of how we deal with that. None of this is perfect but this was the best solution found. CORU will issue some clear guidelines on what is expected and the employer will attest to those guidelines and experience having been met. CORU can then say "No" on any individual application or any individual employer and then, critically, once the social care workers have registered now for the first time, they must now engage in continuous professional development. The continuous professional development will speak to some of the concerns the Deputy raised, which I share.

I have had exactly this conversation with the Department.