Mr. Eoin O'Sullivan:

I thank Deputy Buckley. I have empathy for CORU and, to some extent, the Department of Health, because it is a complicated matter. There are huge crossovers between psychology, psychotherapy and counselling and there is a very complicated debate within the industry as to what demarks what and it is difficult to agree that not only in this State, but across Europe where different people put different arguments. Counselling tends to be more on a surface level dealing with a crisis in the moment and treatment can be to support that person to get out of that crisis, but what happens along that journey is once those symptoms abate the individual might become aware of what has activated those feelings in the first place. That calls for more depth work to look at the roots of those problems, those issues, those activations. That might involve looking at issues within the family of origin, issues with complex trauma, historical issues from the individual and his or her maladaptive coping mechanisms. Where a person might come in to counselling to deal with a specific presenting issue, that can develop and move into what I describe as psychotherapy, that is, the more depth work of looking at the root cause and looking at those activations and coping mechanisms. Psychology then, will look at all of that with the addition of looking at deviations from the norm and standardised assessments. Where psychologists are much more concerned with diagnoses, psychotherapists and counsellors, in my experience and opinion, deal more with the experience of the individual who is sitting across from them and how his or her life is being affected by whatever issue it is he or she is dealing with, and those can be very varied and complex issues.

I understand, therefore, that CORU's job is very hard. I have mentioned the level 8 qualification. One of its recommendations says it cannot legislate for a requirement of a psychotherapist in training or counsellor in training to attend counselling or psychotherapy himself or herself. Within the industry and for me personally, that is quite a shocking statement. I am psychotherapist, I have been a client and I am a client at the moment. I want to be sitting across from somebody who I know has done his or her own work. If I am sitting across from a client who has, for instance, issues with his or her father and he or she is talking to me about emotional neglect or abuse of some kind or another and that activates something in me, the risk is instead of dealing with that client's presentation and what is happening with him or her, my own stuff gets activated. If I have not worked through that it will infect the treatment I am offering my client, so for me it is very important psychotherapists in particular have undergone psychotherapy to work through their issues. I would compare psychotherapy training to being put in a washing machine on a spin cycle in that everything gets thrown up. They will look for buttons and will press them to ensure the trainee is ready to sit in front of a client and be in the best position to do no harm. The differences in the standards of courses available is frustrating. My training was four years at postgraduate level. I had a requirement of 40 hours personal therapy per year for three years and 20 hours in my first year. There are training colleges at the moment that require 40 hours in total and that is it. Graduates come out of those courses maybe at a level 7 and there is no distinction between what they call themselves or what they can advertise as offering their clients and what I can describe myself as or advertise as the services I can offer to clients, so it is vitally important regulation comes in to protect the clients.

I take the Deputy's point there can be a lot of competition between the individual professions of psychologist, counsellor and psychotherapist and a lot of jostling for position. Coming before the committee as an individual kind of provided me the opportunity to step out of the politics of the various accreditation boards and whose feet I might be treading on. My petition is calling for the expenses of psychologists, as well as counsellors and psychotherapists, to be made an eligible expense for tax purposes.

That saving, in answer to Deputy Buckley's question, is passed on to the individual. The individual then gets his or her receipt and uploads it to the Revenue website and that refund goes straight to him or her. I think it is connected to his or her tax credits. If the expenses are made eligible for tax purposes, the saving goes to the clients, which makes the service more affordable and, it is to be hoped, will take some burden off the public health service, which just cannot cope at the minute. I do not think that is controversial to say.