Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and congratulate him on this legislation, which, albeit in large part technical in nature, is a comprehensive provision in what it sets out and in the objectives it seeks to achieve. Certainly, we need to strengthen those healthcare professionals who are awaiting greater security following the precarity that arose out of Brexit, which is also faced by our doctors.

I was contacted this week by someone I represent who had had a fantastic experience at the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital thanks to the efficiency and everything about the way they had been treated from beginning to end. They had a couple of problems along the way but the staff were incredibly helpful. Over the course of their experience, however, they met about eight people of whom not one was Irish, which shows how dependent we are on people coming in and being part of our health service, and the exceptional support patients get throughout the country as a consequence of people coming in and enhancing that patient experience.As everything we do in this regard is absolutely to be congratulated, well done to the Minister on that.

We must address, though, other areas in which we are wanting. The Minister's sentiment regarding the regulation is absolutely spot on. I welcome his comments on CORU. We know it is stand-alone and independent and that it has a regulatory function and everything about the safeguards that are in place on its independent functioning. However, we have to ask about whether is it sufficiently resourced. We have, let us say, psychotherapists who were in process there for year. We had the issues with psychologists. When we look at issues within health and within the area of the care of children with disabilities, in particular, we have fantastic schemes for outsourcing health, such as the National Treatment Purchase Fund and all those schemes, that we cannot always adequately apply to the area of disabilities or wherever because of the lack of regulation. Psychologists outside of the HSE may very well be qualified to the same proven standards applied by the HSE. However, we cannot verify that because of the CORU process, which seems to take an eternity. I note that when we look at how many board meetings it has had, since 2019, it appears to only have had 20. One would question why that is when we are in a place of emergency. Why is that? I am sure the Minister has made inquiries because he is at the front line of trying to ensure that our health service is completely resourced. I am sure he has views on this and I would welcome them. Is CORU resourced enough? Is there a method of carrying out regulation and verifying a particular profession? Is that too long? I understand all the stages they have to make along the way. To be fair, to be able to state that a particular person is indeed a psychologist does take a lot. I have gone through each of the stages myself. It certainly seems to take forever, however. The cause and effect on patients is somewhat intolerable. We have situations of parents getting assessments done by psychologists who were not real psychologists at all. I know the Minister is fully aware of that. In that regard, what is our view towards CORU? Is there anything more we can do? If so, it is important that we do so.

There are professionals across all fields. I did an enormous amount of work to attain a particular standard in counselling psychology. The idea that anybody could get a brass plaque and put the word "psychologist" after his or her name is appalling. We cannot tolerate people trading under an esteemed professional title, one that a person would assume has an awful lot of training and experience behind it only to find that it does not. We need regulation; that is important. What more can we do on that? I would really welcome the Minister's comments in that regard. I congratulate him, however. It is really good legislation.