Michael Cahill (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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1979. To ask the Minister for Health the number of doctors who successfully completed specialist training for general practitioners in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [18516/25]

Michael Cahill (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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1988. To ask the Minister for Health the number of doctors who have retired in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, and the number of doctors who have qualified as general practitioners in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [18563/25]

Michael Cahill (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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1989. To ask the Minister for Health the number of doctors who have retired in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [18564/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 1979, 1988 and 1989 together.

As this is a service matter, I have asked the Health Service Executive to respond to the Deputy directly, as soon as possible.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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1980. To ask the Minister for Health if she will address concerns regarding CORU’s requirement for graduates to complete a placement in adult disability in a health and social care setting (details supplied); and if she will make a statement on the matter. [18536/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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CORU, Ireland’s multi-profession health and social care regulator, is committed to protecting the public by ensuring that all registrants meet a consistent, safe threshold of competence.

To enable the opening of the division of the register for educational psychologists, the Psychologists Registration Board (the Board) must first establish its pre-registration education and training requirements. These requirements set:

(i) the threshold knowledge, skills and professional behaviours (the Standards of Proficiency) and

(ii) the quality assurance requirements for education and training programmes seeking approval from the Board (the Criteria for Education and Training Programmes).

The Board prepared draft Standards and Criteria for clinical, counselling and educational psychologists and launched a public consultation on 7 October 2024, inviting feedback from a range of stakeholders including members of the profession, education providers, employers, professional bodies and members of the public. E-book resources and a recorded webinar were made available to stakeholders to support engagement with the consultative process and are available https://coru.ie/public-protection/public-consultations/past-consultations/. The consultation closed on 29 November 2024.

The Board’s statutory remit is to ensure the competence of registrants to practise safely in any setting where they engage with vulnerable service users. This is inextricably bound with its legal object and remit to ensure protection of the professional title; namely, that all who use the protected title have the same threshold knowledge, skill and competence to ensure a consistent, safe level of practice. Practice education, as a means of ensuring that graduates have demonstrated achievement of competency at a threshold level, is an essential component of an education and training programme equipping future practitioners to work safely upon graduation.

I am advised that the Board is continuing to analyse submissions received to its public consultation as it works to set the threshold standards required for public protection for entry to the educational psychologist division of the register. I am also aware of issues that have arisen in the context of the many submissions received.

CORU remains open to engagement with stakeholders, and I am confident that the Board will continue to clarify its standards and processes to ensure a balanced, fair and public-protection-oriented regulatory system for both domestic and internationally trained educational psychologists.

I look forward to the imminent regulation of these psychology professionals.