Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. I am taking this Topical Issue on behalf of my colleague the Minister for Health, Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill.

Primary care psychology plays a central role in providing care and treatment to both children and adults in the community and, particularly, in offering the opportunity for early intervention for children and young people. The increased pressure and demand on primary care services, and on primary care psychology for children and young people in particular, are related to the increase in referrals and the increasing complexity of presentations requiring longer intervention times, as well as staff shortages and ongoing recruitment challenges in the community. These factors all contribute to an increase in waiting lists for primary care services, including primary care psychology services across the country, including in Cork and Kerry.

To address long waiting times at a national level, the Department of Health is working with the HSE on a focused programmatic approach to primary care waiting list management to put in place considerable standardised infrastructure to support systematic responses to primary care waiting lists.

This will facilitate a greater understanding of the scale and drivers of demand; allow for improved planning, interventions and investment considerations; and support the most efficient use of capacity. As well as looking at the long-term changes that are needed, the programme of work will also examine what can be done to address those waiting over a year on access to primary care therapies. This approach involves three main workstreams that aim to improve access to primary care therapy services by analysing activity and maximising capacity, developing national measures to reduce long wait times and creating a consistent management protocol for referrals and waiting lists to these services.

At a regional level, HSE South West has highlighted significant work that is currently under way to enhance access to primary care psychology in Kerry. In June 2025, the regional executive officer appointed a regional director of psychology with a specific focus on reviewing psychological services, including workforce planning, reviewing the service provision model and considering other psychological support services that can meet the needs of the population.

Progress has also been made in relation to advancing recruitment to fill allocated vacancies in the Kerry primary care psychology service. National primary care funding was allocated to HSE South West mid-2025 to initiate waiting list initiatives to increase access to psychological intervention for children and young people on existing primary care waiting lists.

In terms of increasing capacity, there has also been a significant increase in 2025 for doctoral training places for psychology - clinical and educational programmes - in the region, with a total of 18 trainees funded by HSE South West who commenced in September 2025. This is part of a sustained trainee programme that now has 45 trainees in the system over a three-year cycle. All graduates will be offered a permanent post in the region on completion of training, capitalising on the investment and thereby improving staff to population ratios and reducing waiting lists. HSE South West has also highlighted several key initiatives currently in process and aimed at improving access to services.

The establishment of the new single point of access working group is supporting a more efficient triage of children to ensure that they access the most suitable service in a timely manner and is reducing waiting list duplication across primary care psychology, CAMHS and CDNTs. The HSE South West child psychology service waiting list improvement initiative working group has also just been established under the regional director of psychology. Its three main priorities regarding aiming to improve access to psychological services for children in the region are workforce planning and development, waiting list and capacity solutions, referral pathways and demand management and clinical service model innovation. I will bring the points raised by the Deputy to the attention of the Minister and the Department.

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