Ms Siobhan Thomas:

I will make one point on the final recommendation Ms Dillon highlighted around the transparency involved in applying for the different doctorates. The breaking point for me in leaving clinical psychology as a career was learning that colleagues of mine had been graded on their leaving certificate results. At the time, I was 28 years old. I had not done my leaving certificate for ten years. When I heard from a colleague that their leaving certificate results were graded equally to their postgraduate training, I then realised there was no place for me in clinical psychology. Coming from a background where I was never going to do very well in the leaving certificate anyway, if it meant that my leaving certificate results were graded equally to the effort, hard work and dedication I put in during my undergraduate and postgraduate training, it became obvious to me there was not a place for me in the service and that was the moment I decided to leave. More transparency and equity in grading to get on to clinical doctorate courses is really a massively important step to fixing equality issues in the discipline.