Cabinet Committees
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-24
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

The other key challenge has been clinical placements in terms of people pursuing various disciplines. We are expanding that too. This morning, the Minister received further sanction for additional places in all our third level colleges in respect of medicine and allied healthcare professionals. The Deputy had a specific query in terms of clinical psychology and the short number of places. Again, you cannot overnight turn nine into 25 or 30 because we need lots of capacities downstream to facilitate, both within the college and in terms of clinical placements and so on. I will raise the issue with the Minister for higher education in respect of clinical psychology itself. To a certain extent, if there was that many applying, we should see how best we can use that talent pool for the disciplines because we need more and more people and we need more multidisciplinary teams. Part of the issue with psychiatry was the absence of multidisciplinary teams historically in the mental health arena. I am very open to that and will talk to the Minister in respect of it.
Deputy Murphy raised what I consider to be a horrific story, a very sad story for the family, a very challenging and traumatic diagnosis. For it to be followed by the biopsy and so on - I cannot clinically call that. I presume that was CHI?

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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