Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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92. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if the recently announced appointment of ten additional NEPS psychologists will be used to deal with staff shortages due to leave; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11080/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I can inform the Deputy that, under my Department’s Action Plan for Education 2017, the ten NEPS posts to which refers will be targeted at enhancing NEPs service to DEIS schools with particular emphasis on well-being.

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.

 Access to SCPA is afforded to schools, in the situation instanced by the Deputy, where the school’s assigned psychologist is not available due to maternity leave, long-term sick leave or carer’s leave, necessitating a temporary hiatus in NEPS direct coverage. This situation returns to normal as individual staff members return to work.

In the interim the affected schools will allowed access to the SCPA scheme for their assessment needs and will continue to be supported by NEPS personnel in the event of a critical incident.

In the broader context, the Deputy will be aware that my Department will recruit in total, 21 NEPS psychologists in the coming months to bring the total number of NEPS psycologists to 183 (a 13% increase from the current level of 162). 11 of these will be in place by the end of the current academic year filling vacancies in the current complement, while the ten posts referred to above will be in place for the commencement of the 2017/2018 academic year.