Dan Neville (Limerick West, Fine Gael)
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Question 280: To ask the Minister for Health and Children the regulatory regime for psychotherapists. [6804/10]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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The ongoing regulatory programme undertaken by my Department has seen the introduction of the Health and Social Care Professionals Act 2005, providing for statutory registration for 12 designated health and social care professional grades. The structure of the system of statutory registration will comprise a registration board for each of the professions to be registered, a health and social care professionals council with overall responsibility for the regulatory system and a committee to deal with disciplinary matters.

As a first step in the implementation of the system of statutory registration, I launched the Health and Social Care Professionals Council in March 2007. The CEO and an administrative staff member were appointed in 2008 and an additional two senior administrative staff took up duty with the council in late 2009. These appointments will greatly assist the council in its ongoing work in preparing for the establishment of the individual registration boards, the first of which (the Social Work Registration Board) is to be established shortly. The council is currently working to put in place the necessary structures for registration, education and fitness to practise for the 12 health and social care professions designated in the Act and it is hoped to bring additional registration boards on stream in late 2010.

The Health and Social Care Professionals Council will enable health and social care professionals to practise in a regulated, controlled and safe environment and in a manner which will ensure the provision of high-quality interventions, meeting the challenges of increasingly complex and evolving care for service users. While the proposed system of statutory registration applies, in the first instance to 12 health and social care professions, the legislation empowers the Minister for Health and Children to include, on the basis of specific criteria, additional health and social care professions in the regulatory system by regulation over time, as appropriate. However, the priority for the Health and Social Care Professionals Council is to establish statutory registration for the 12 designated health and social care professions in the first instance. The issue of inclusion of other grades, such as psychotherapists, within the scope of statutory registration will be considered after the initial designated 12 professional grades have been fully dealt with.