Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)
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419. To ask the Minister for Health the number of psychology training placements funded by her Department for the coming college term from September 2025; and their allocation to each training course in educational, counselling and clinical psychology. [33412/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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Department of Health officials engage on an ongoing basis with colleagues in the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS) and other relevant stakeholders to ensure that we train enough graduates with the skills necessary to support the delivery of health and social care services and to develop a strategic approach to workforce planning for the health sector.

Significant progress has been made working with the Higher Education Sector and Professional Bodies to increase the number of student training places to ensure that we have enough healthcare professionals to meet future demand for health services.

As part of Budget 2023, the Department of Health secured recurring funding to support the training and education of counselling psychologists on PhD programmes. As part of this initiative, the HSE offered 10 Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) funded places to first year students on the doctoral training programme in Counselling Psychology, Trinity College Dublin (TCD), commencing in September 2023. This funding package covered salary in addition to 60% of course fees and was commensurate with paid training schemes offered by the HSE to Psychology Trainees in other specialisms (Clinical Psychology and Educational Psychology). Places on the training programme will continue to be funded under this scheme for the coming college term in September 2025.

Further work is underway with DFHERIS and other relevant Government Departments and the Higher Education Authority to increase the number of student places across all health and social care professions.