Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy will be aware my Department’s National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) provides an educational psychological 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), full details of which are in the NEPS section of my Department's website. Under this scheme schools 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.

NEPS psychologists are recruited via regional panels formed from national recruitment competitions administered by the Public Appointments Service (PAS). The previous panel which had existed in this regard had reached the end of its useful life and was closed in autumn 2016. A new national recruitment competition has been put in place by the Public Appointments Service (PAS) to fill vacancies within all NEPS Regions. The resulting interview process associated with this competition will be completed in the current week immediately following which recruitment panels for each NEPS region will be formed. PAS will then finalise the processing of the candidates, including Garda vetting, and propose each candidate in series to my Department Human Resources Section for contract negotiations and formal job offer.

It is envisaged that the process will produce new NEPS psychologists for assignment to schools, including that to which the Deputy refers in his question, by the end of the current academic year. In the interim this school will continue to have access to the SCPA for its assessment needs. Direct support from NEPS to the school in the event of a critical incidents will in any case continue to be provided.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.