Mr. Eoin O'Sullivan:

Again, to recognise the work of CORU, there is a board that has been working on the recommendations for regulation. There are, I think, two counselling representatives, two psychotherapists and some private individuals who have done a lot of work in deciding what their recommendations would be. It was decided a number of years ago that there would be two registration boards, one for counsellors and one for psychotherapists. That in itself was a somewhat controversial decision. There is one accrediting body, the IACP, which traditionally held that counselling and psychotherapy were the same. Then there is another organisation, the Irish Council for Psychotherapy. That would have always delineated counselling and psychotherapy as being very different. The recommendations have been put out by CORU for public consultation. Anybody can submit their view on the recommendations. I believe that all accrediting bodies are working on their responses at the moment. That will throw up some objections because you will not be able to keep everybody happy, but I am confident that at least CORU - I do not mean this to sound disrespectful to anybody - will act as the adult in the room. It has its recommendations and it will listen, and it is important that it listens to the professionals out there with their experience and listens to that feedback but then looks at what is possible. CORU's legislation and recommendations are for threshold limits. It will look at the minimum qualifications counsellors or psychotherapists have. It is like when social workers were regulated for and the minimum was a level 8 qualification. I think there are two courses that are level 8; the rest are level 9. Training colleges will still be able to go over and above. I trust CORU to do its work. It has put a lot of work into this, but there is an urgency there. It needs to be done as quickly as possible, and it is a matter of getting to that stage, but it could be three years or five years, and in the meantime the profession is left twiddling its thumbs because we are waiting for this thing to come in.