Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The housing crisis can only be fixed by building houses, the hospital crisis can only be truly fixed by more hospital beds and, indeed, the incessant problems we are having with children waiting for diagnostic tests and psychological screening can only be rectified when NEPS and the child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, have an adequate capacity of educational psychologists.

It just struck me many times over. When I was at Mary Immaculate College, there was a course, a bachelor of education in education and psychology, MI008, with an intake of 33 students per annum. Their career progression is not clear. A small cohort goes into educational psychology and most go into primary school teaching. They have qualifications in educational psychology, but they teach maths, English and Irish all day long. They never get into realm of screening and diagnostics. I acknowledge there will be a top-up required in order to do that. One cannot just become clinical the minute one graduates from college and diagnosis children. However, surely, that in-house capacity needs to be looked at, rather than referring the children off onto a NEPS list, where they might not get an appointment for 18 months. Surely, the in-house capacity, namely, the teacher down the corridor who has this qualification, needs to be activated. However, that can only happen if there is an adequate intake.

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