Cabinet Committees
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-24
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

If we are going to provide for children with special needs, for the mental health of young people and for mental health services generally, we need to rapidly recruit more people with the qualifications necessary to provide assessments and services. We are not doing it. Despite lip service being paid by the Government to the fact that it is, it is not actually doing it. I want to give the Taoiseach a dramatic example. I happen to know somebody who has a masters and a bachelor of arts, BA, in psychology and who applied to UCD to do a doctorate. There were 370 applications for nine places in clinical psychology. Everybody had to have a minimum of a 2.1 in a BA. Most of them had a masters and had experience but only nine got places in clinical psychology. There were 14 places in educational, I think, and a similar number.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:40+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-24