Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Noonan.

Emer Currie (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State for stepping in today. This is a Commencement matter on education addressed to the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley. I hope the Minister of State can relay my messages back to her. We need more psychologists in the HSE. We need them working in schools, in primary care, in child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, and on our children's disability network teams. I very much welcome the decision to pilot in-house mental health counselling for primary school pupils, amounting to €5 million in the budget. It is something for which I had called. We need it in our secondary schools too.

I am asking the Minister, through the Minister of State, who they are going to employ to take on these roles. There are 9,500 children waiting on primary care psychology services - an overwhelming number. Without early intervention, mild mental health issues grow, leading to bigger problems. This can be avoided with the right support and treatment. There are not enough psychologists in our children's disability network teams for our special schools. We do not have enough national educational psychologists in the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, or therapists in mainstream or special classes. It is acutely felt by children with autism and special needs and by their families. That is the situation at the moment before we also start to recruit for general mental health support in schools, which as I said is very positive.

I mention also that there is no mandatory training for teachers for autism in mainstream classrooms to ensure teachers are equipped to respond to the needs of children as well. It is great we are launching pilot programmes like this, that we have committed to reinstating therapists in special schools, and that we are opening buildings in our communities for children's disability network teams, CDNTs.It is great that money was allocated in the budget that we have never seen before but if we are not fixing the problem of actual recruitment and places, then we are prolonging the problem and the pain for families. Something the Government and the Department of Education have done in this budget, to address some of the inequity around trainee psychologist doctorate programmes, was to enable counselling psychologists to access the same amount of funding and the same salary as clinical psychologists. That is good news, but educational psychologists have been left out. Why have they been left out?

I will give some figures I received from somebody who wrote to me this week and I have been dealing with this issue for a long time now. This is someone who is doing the education and child psychology doctorate at Mary Immaculate College. She has already spent €30,000 training to get to this point in her career. She is paying €10,000 in fees and is working for 330 days unpaid. Her counterpart in the clinical psychologist course gets a salary of €40,497 and 60% of her fees are covered. As part of their doctorates, these people will be based in the HSE's children's disability services, in the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, in the child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, and in the primary care psychology service. Post-qualification they will be qualified to work in any of those areas. Why do they not have access to the same funding to pay the extortionate cost when they dedicate their lives to children and educational psychology? Not only do they deserve to be paid the same, they need to be valued for what they are doing and that is part of the reason they will work in the HSE.

Lorraine Clifford-Lee (Fianna Fail)
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The Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, has four minutes to respond to the Senator.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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I was aware of this issue. I had been in correspondence with a constituent about it. It seems to be an anomaly. I will give the Minister's response now, but I agree the support they provide to schools and CAMHS and critical incident support in schools is a hugely valued resource for our schools. I am taking the Commencement matter on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Foley, who sends her apologies for being unable to be here this morning.

The Department's National Educational Service, NEPS, provides educational and psychological support to all recognised primary and post-primary schools. This involves direct support in the event of a critical incident; access to national and regional support and development work to build school capacity to support students; access to a NEPS psychologist for responses to queries; and access to individual pupil casework, where there is a need, via a NEPS psychologist or through the scheme for commissioning psychological assessments.

NEPS has adopted a consultative model of service that focuses on empowering teachers to intervene effectively with pupils whose needs range from mild to severe and transient to enduring. Psychologists use a problem-solving and solution-oriented consultative approach to maximise positive outcomes for these pupils. NEPS encourages schools to use a continuum-based assessment and intervention process whereby each school takes responsibility for initial assessment, educational planning and intervention for pupils with learning, emotional or behavioural difficulties. Teachers may consult their NEPS psychologist should they need to at this stage of the process. Where reasonable progress is not made following a school's best efforts in consultation with NEPS, a psychologist will become involved with an individual child for intensive intervention or assessment. This system allows psychologists to give early attention to urgent cases and also to help many more children indirectly than could be seen individually.

In 2021 the NEPS casework service extended to more than 8,500 students. In addition, private psychologists provided assessment to schools for more than 900 students under the scheme for commissioning psychological assessment process. The NEPS support and development service reaches an estimated 25,000 teachers annually. The number of NEPS sanctioned psychologists have increased from an employment control framework base of 173 whole-time equivalent psychologist posts in 2014. Budgets 2017, 2018 and 2019 sanctioned an additional 31 posts in total. As part of a package of measures to support the well-being of school communities as schools re-opened following post-Covid-19 closures, an additional 17 psychologist posts were sanctioned. During the 2019-2020 academic year, temporary project posts were sanctioned: four for the school-inclusion model and three for the North East Inner City project.

The NEPS is led by a director supported by regional directors and senior psychologists. Currently, in the region of 225 whole-time equivalent educational psychologists deliver an excellent service to our schools. The Minister recently announced an additional 54 educational psychologists to provide services to special schools and special classes as part of budget 2023. The Department values the work of all educational psychologists across the education system and, as the Senator is likely aware, the NEPS of the Department provides a comprehensive school-based psychological service to all primary and post-primary schools through the application of psychological theory and practice to support well-being, academic,social and emotional development of all learners. NEPS provides this service to schools through casework with individual children and support and development work for schools.

The Department is conscious of the challenges in recruiting educational psychologists and has established a high-level working group, chaired by the secretary general of the Department to consider how best to support educational psychologists and ensure a sufficient supply of psychologists is available to the education sector.

Both the Department and the Minister are aware of the issue of fees for trainee educational psychologists and are working proactively and intensively to find a positive resolution for the issue.

Emer Currie (Fine Gael)
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The last paragraph is my update. I welcome the high-level working group to look at this in the round, but the issue of fees is urgent and it needs to be addressed as soon as possible for equity and for these people to feel valued. I ask the Minister of State to bring that back to the Ministers if he can.

Something else that has come to my attention is the good news that the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, announced that therapists would be reinstated in special schools and our special school in Dublin 15, Danu, has been told of its allocation which includes a behavioural therapist we have needed and wanted for a long time. However, I have now heard Fórsa has stepped in because the CDNTs have been directed to provide their most senior therapists, but we are all swimming out of the same pool. How do they do that and do all of the work they have in their CDNTs as well? We have an problem here and that also needs to be addressed. This is an issue that straddles the HSE and the Department of Education and it cannot get lost between the two. The might of both is needed to respond to the needs of children.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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I will certainly take these issues back. As I said, the correspondence I received stated the Department is making every effort to try to address the issue of the training fees support for educational psychologists. It is an anomaly that needs to be rectified. It is critical for parity of the professions.

As the Senator quite rightly said, we need those supports right across the range of services for children and young people in our schools now more than ever. They are fantastic services. They offer a great range of supports to teachers, especially around critical incidents but also in general in the overall emotional well-being of the school environment.

I will take up the issue the Senator raised separately about the behavioural therapists with the Minister of State, Deputy Butler. I will bring both of these issues back to both Ministers of State on the Senator's behalf.

Lorraine Clifford-Lee (Fianna Fail)
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I believe the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, will take Senator Boyhan's commencement matter as well.