Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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410. To ask the Minister for Health the progress which has been made to establish a recognised standard of training for practitioners of acupuncture (details supplied); if academic validation of training programmes in this field by QQI is in place; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13987/18]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The academic validation of training programmes in this field by QQI is a matter for QQI.  

In September 2010, HETAC (now QQI)  and the Department of Health jointly commissioned an International Review of the Academic Validation of Higher Education Programmes in the Complementary Therapies.  It focused on five fields, including acupuncture, herbal medicine and traditional Chinese medicine, in jurisdictions which have national education frameworks comparable to the Bologna framework (an EU quality assurance system in education based on learning outcomes) and aimed to identify criteria for the identification of complementary therapies which have the academic and professional maturity to warrant the academic validation of programmes by HETAC/QQI.  A draft report was published on the HETAC website in late 2012 to which stakeholders were invited to respond.

The  research project was managed by HETAC.  My Department participated because, where the academic validation of a training programme is in place, it might arise that such academic standards might be deemed as the entry level standards to the practice of a profession by systems of either statutory or voluntary regulation. 

Since then, the immediate priority of my Department, within the field of professional regulation, has been the full implementation of the Health and Social Care Professionals Act 2005.  This designates fourteen professions for statutory regulation, and this month the Oireachtas approved the designation as well, in the public interest, of the professions of  counsellor and psychotherapist which further extends the implementation period being worked towards.