Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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64. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the amount his Department paid to psychologists and the number of children assessed under the scheme for psychological assessment in each of the years 2006 to 2016 to date; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15234/16]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy may be aware that my Department's National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) provides educational psychology service to all primary and post primary schools through an assigned NEPS psychologist and in some cases through the Scheme for Commissioning Psychological Assessments (SCPA). The scheme is administered by NEPS from a panel of private practitioners maintained for this purpose.

The Scheme for Commissioning was created in 2001 as a temporary measure to provide service to schools (assessment only) in advance of full provision of NEPS personnel and where a NEPS psychologist was not available to provide the full NEPS model of service. Historically service was provided to schools either by a NEPS psychologist or through SCPA.

From the start of the 2013/14 academic year and based on a planned staffing complement of 173 w.t.e., NEPS assigned a psychologist to all mainstream schools in order to provide the full advisory & support service. This has meant that NEPS psychologists have taken on additional schools and pupil numbers which is supported by the use of SCPA where the psychologist deems appropriate. SCPA is used in the main to provide assessment service to school whose NEPS psychologist is not available due to for example maternity or sick leave or in advance of NEPS achieving its sanctioned staffing limit of 173 whole-time-equivalent psychologist numbers. For the Deputy's information, the following table sets out the number of assessments commissioned under SCPA for each of the last ten year and their cost.

Service provided to school via the Scheme for the Commissioning of Psychological Assessments (SCPA

(*) the rise from 2009 to 2010 is attributable to a late commencement of the scheme at the start of the 2009/10 academic year which caused a bulge of activity/cost in early 2010 which would normally have been experienced in 2009. The overall diminution in SCPA reflects directly the growth in NEPS employed psychologist numbers.