Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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172. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of DEIS schools that do not have direct access to a NEPS psychologist for the purpose of carrying out an assessment; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9236/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy may be aware my Department’s National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) provides an educational psychological service to schools through the direct assignment of a NEPS psychologist and in some cases through by providing schools access to the Scheme for Commissioning Psychological Assessments (SCPA) where 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. SCPA is utilised, in the main, where as yet unfilled vacancies exist in NEPS staffing provision locally or where staffing resource is lost through extended leave (maternity, sick or carer’s leave).

Currently some 131 DEIS schools do not have access to a NEPS Psychologist for the purposes of carrying out an assessment in Dublin and who currently derive this service through the above-mentioned SCPA scheme. In respect of NEPS staffing, NEPS psychologists are recruited via regional panels formed from national recruitment competitions administered by the Public Appointments service.

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 was completed earlier this month and recruitment panels for each NEPS region, will now be formed. PAS will 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 addition a number of the assigned NEPS psychologists to schools, included in the attached count, are currently absent due to maternity leave, long-term sick leave or carer’s leave necessitating a temporary hiatus in NEPS coverage. This situation will change as individual staff return to work.

However it is important to point out that in cases where NEPS service is not available through staffing vacancy or temporary absence of staff, as described above, the schools affected continue to have access to a psychologist through the Scheme for Commissioning Psychological Assessments to undertake pupil assessment work.

I would also confirm that all schools are able to access full NEPS supports in the event of a critical incident irrespective of their having ongoing access to an assigned NEPS psychologist or not.

The Deputy will also be aware that my Department, in commencing the delivery in the Programme for Government of a commitment to increase NEPS psychologist numbers by 65, intends to recruit in 2017 ten additional NEPS psychologists. We envisage the recruits will be in place in this regard by the commencement of the 2017/18 academic.