Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 1 June 2023
141. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science if he will ensure in Budget 2024 that all three streams of PhD psychology students are fully-funded; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26745/23]
View answerMy Department is strongly committed to supporting the health and wellbeing of the population through the provision of graduates with the key competencies and skills to be effective in the health workforce, and support a range of clinical teams in our health services.
As the Deputy is aware, Higher Education Institutions are autonomous institutions and therefore it is a matter for individual institutions to determine the rate of tuition fees for postgraduate academic programmes including psychology.
Funding was secured in Budget 2023 by the Department of Health to provide for sponsorship for Clinical and Counselling trainee Psychologist PhD programmes. This arrangement is not the responsibility of my Department, but the Department of Health and the HSE.
Issues arising from sponsorships and employment eligibility in relation to psychologists, and indeed more generally, are matters for relevant employers rather than the responsibility of my Department.
With regards to Educational Psychology, it should be noted that a working group in the Department of Education has been examining how NEPS can continue to recruit adequate numbers of suitably qualified staff and continue to respond to the educational psychological needs of children in recognised primary and post-primary schools across the country.
To address supply issues in the medium to long term a workforce plan for educational psychologists is being developed within the Department of Education. As an immediate short-term measure the Department of Education introduced a bursary to support Trainee Educational Psychologists currently in their third year (or third year equivalent) of professional training in University College Dublin (UCD) and Mary Immaculate College (MIC), who expect to graduate in 2023.
Officials in the Department of Education are finalising details with Mary Immaculate College and University College Dublin to provide bursary supports for students of the educational psychological doctorate programme who would graduate in 2024, 2025 and 2026 respectively.
