Ms Marina Dillon:

I will start by reading out the recommendations, and if those attending with me would then like to contribute, I would be happy to hear from them as well.

The critical recommendation relates to equity of funding for trainee counselling and educational psychologists. For that to happen, my understanding is that the national psychology placement office needs to be established. It has been in train for the past couple of years, but for whatever reason - it is for Dr. Henry to revert on that - it has not been done. Apart from dealing with the obvious issue of inequity, this recommendation is critical because I have found that those who would prefer to go into the specialisations of counselling and educational psychology are unable to because they cannot afford to. Instead, they are applying for clinical psychology. This is far from ideal and should not be happening, and is part of the reason it is so critical that we attend to the inequity as the first priority.

The second priority would be to increase the number of places across all psychology doctoral programmes to meet need. The level of need is clear; all of us at this meeting are in agreement that the HSE is understaffed. We need more psychologists, which will only happen if we take more in. I believe it was Deputy Boyd Barrett who stated that 52 trainees had been taken on board last year.

That is far from enough if we want to cover the 40% plus of vacancies in the HSE.

The third recommendation refers to the expansion and extension of the role of assistant psychologist to help address the mental health and waiting list crisis. We have highly-qualified people, who are primary care members and beyond, who have master's degree level in psychology and several years of experience having worked for free and gained relevant clinical experience. All they are waiting for is to get on to the coveted doctoral course. In the meantime, they are literally twiddling their thumbs or earning the minimum to get by. Why are we not utilising that huge resource? Instead, they are coming up against a brick wall. The APSI is one example of how we could utilise and bring them in.

The fourth recommendation calls for an end to all voluntary assistant psychologist posts. It goes without saying that in this day and age, and particularly considering the cost of living, no one can afford to work for free. It should not be happening and particularly within the HSE.

The fifth recommendation calls for provision of clinical placements on all masters psychology courses and the offer of practical placements during the final year of accredited undergraduate psychology degrees. This was an idea of CARE's. I spoke about the limbo of bridging the gap between going from an undergraduate degree and gaining a placement. If a person gains that experience in a placement at undergraduate level, he or she is already coming in with experience and if that person has experience, he or she will have the confidence to start applying for the doctorate. People will find they do not have such a long-term limbo land. The same goes for master's degrees. All master's courses should be providing placements in order that we are better placed to apply for doctorates.

Finally, we call for more transparency and consistency in the application process for clinical doctorates. The feedback we have received from our members is that it is as if the goals move year-on-year. There is, for example, quite a complex grading system provided by the top five universities. We have noticed that early career psychologists who applied, for example, for the clinical psychology doctorate and did not get a place get comprehensive feedback as to why. There is a breakdown. They are actually scored, in some cases, based on their leaving certificate results and also how they did at the interview, etc. They take that on board and then come back another year and apply and they get much different feedback to the point they are wondering what they are doing wrong. They do not, therefore, really know what they need to do to get better placed. That seems to be an issue.

We are looking for uniformity, ideally. That would probably mean collaboration between universities as regards the application process or perhaps that is something that will also be within the remit of the national psychology placement office. Those were our six key points. My colleagues may wish to come in on that.