Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Leave that with me. It certainly something we can discuss further and we could maybe consider bringing it in on Report Stage. Let me just talk further with the officials on what that might encompass. I would not be averse to that.

To the various points Deputy Shortall made, I share a lot of those concerns. I am not satisfied with the progress that has been made today. I am not satisfied with the current approach whereby every single profession has its own governing board. I am not satisfied with the lack of progress made on psychology. I will update the committee in a moment; there has been progress in the last few weeks on that. As the Deputy says, this Act has been around since 2005. We have nine regulated professions. We have another three which are in process. We have counsellors and psychotherapists, psychologists and the one before us today, social care workers. We then have another two which are designated, so they are next in line, namely orthoptists and clinical biochemists. To the Deputy's point, there are 20 more that are looking for regulation and I have met various members of the professions the Deputy referenced. In that list of 20, for example, a really important one is home care assistants. That is going to be a big one. There is a massive piece of work going on in respect of the interRAI pilots around that. If we were to let things continue as they are, it could be 20 years before we all of these regulated. I share a lot of the Deputy's concerns and frustrations.

The plan is to modernise the governance structures in CORU and if we need to give CORU additional funding and staff to move this along, we will do that as well. We need a more sustainable model of statutory regulation. I am advised that this was first flagged, believe it or not, 11 years ago in 2012. I guess the former Minister, James Reilly, would have flagged it or maybe it could have been Deputy Shortall herself. I am advised that work began in earnest in 2018 when CORU took a look at its own governance model in the context of a request from the Department. A lot of things were paused during Covid as we are aware. This is one of the things that did not progress at the speed anyone would have liked. In January of this year, CORU submitted a project plan to the Department. That plan was approved in February.

The project is due to commence in the coming weeks. It is going to be led in-house. The expectation is that it will be an 18 month project. This is a full root and branch review of how it has worked since 2005. The estimated cost is about €330,000, with staffing replacement, stakeholder engagement and so forth. On conclusion of the project, it is expected that a new proposal will be in place for a more modern approach to this. My view is that the current approach of having different governing bodies for everything simply does not work. We looked for psychology to be regulated. CORU went out to the profession but there were so many different views from different groups within the profession. CORU came back to me and we proposed a twin-track approach which is now happening. We are prioritising counselling psychology, clinical psychology and educational psychology. I have written back to CORU and asked it to prioritise those three. This is based on patient risk, which is something we all understand.

I would not accept, and I do not think the Deputy would expect me to, that there is a lack of focus on patient safety. Obviously there is a big focus on patient safety. To that end, I think we need a different approach to this. We may need some pretty substantial amending legislation for it. I agree that many of them, although not all of them necessarily, are crying out for regulation. We have audiology, healthcare assistants, clinical scientists, clinical measurement physiologists, pharmacy technicians, physician associates and the exercise professionals.

To clarify one point, the HSE is able to hire non-regulated people. The Deputy gave the example of the exercise professionals. There is nothing stopping the HSE from hiring those people into various roles. For example, the HSE hires lots of psychologists and counsellors. They are not regulated either. It would help if they were regulated but the HSE hires audiologists, physician associates and healthcare assistants. I agree with the Deputy's core point and I share the concerns, so we are going to quite fundamentally shake this up.