Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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Question 549: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the number of schools in County Wexford without access to the services provided by the National Educational Psychological Service; the plans in place to provide this service where it is not currently available; the way many schools avail of the service; if they have unlimited access to the service; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [4854/07]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy will, of course, be aware that all primary and post-primary schools have access to psychological assessments either directly through the National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) or through the Scheme for Commissioning Psychological Assessments (SCPA). Schools that do not currently have NEPS psychologists assigned to them may avail of the SCPA, whereby the school can have an assessment carried out by a member of the panel of private psychologists approved by NEPS, and NEPS will pay the psychologist the fees for this assessment directly.

Under the NEPS service it is the usual practice for the Psychologist and the Principal to meet at the beginning of each year to discuss and agree the NEPS service for that year. Currently, in respect of County Wexford the NEPS service is now available to some 55 of 85 primary schools (representing approximately 65% of pupils) and 18 of 20 post-primary schools (representing approximately 93% of students).

The number of psychologists in the Department has increased from 43 since the establishment of NEPS in 1999 to a current figure of 127, including 4 psychologists assigned to the National Behavioural Support Service. There are also a further 16 Whole-time-equivalent educational psychologists providing service through the Dublin City and County VECs. Taken together, there are currently 143 educational psychologists working in services paid for by my Department.

I announced recently in this connection my intention to expand the number of NEPS psychologists by a further 31 in 2007. This will represent a significant increase in the number of psychologists in NEPS and bring the total number of psychologists in the system to 174. I am pleased to inform the Deputy that in line with the Government's Towards 2016 commitments, the number of NEPS psychologists will be increased even further in each of 2008 and 2009, to a total of 193. At this point, including the 16 psychologists in the Dublin VEC areas, it is expected that the number of educational psychologists in the system as a whole will be 209.