Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of people who are studying to be psychologists, I have raised with the Taoiseach on numerous occasions the fact that educational and counselling psychologists who were doing doctorates did not get funding for very expensive courses. In the budget, the Government extended the funding to counselling psychologists but not to educational psychologists, which is madness when one considers the huge waiting lists for assessments of special needs in the area of education and for services and supports. That needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

I was contacted yesterday by a person studying social work, another area in which we need lots of qualified people. The person is doing a master's degree in UCD and stated that students are now required to do 14 weeks of placement unpaid while doing their master's, with no capacity to pay for that because it is not funded. That needs to be looked into as a matter of urgency.

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