Update on Regulation for Clinical, Counselling and Educational Psychologists

Update December 2024

As part of the Psychologists Registration Board’s progress towards introducing statutory regulation for the psychology profession, it has developed a bespoke regulatory model that will facilitate the protection of the title ‘psychologist’ in Ireland. This model will establish a single register comprised of four divisions: three divisions for Clinical, Counselling and Educational Psychologists and a fourth division – the ‘Psychologists Division’ – for all other psychology specialisms. More detail on the regulatory model can be found here.

The Psychologists Registration Board is progressing opening of the three divisions of its register for Clinical, Counselling and Educational Psychologists. As part of this work, the Board must establish its pre-registration education and training requirements that will set the threshold knowledge, skills and professional behaviours for entry to each of the three divisions of the register (the Standards of Proficiency) and the quality assurance requirements for education and training programmes seeking approval from the Registration Board (the Criteria for Education and Training Programmes).

The Board prepared three distinct sets of draft Standards and Criteria 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. The consultation closed on 29 November 2024.

The Board received a significant amount of detailed and comprehensive feedback from a wide range of stakeholders during the consultation process. CORU thanks all those who took the time to submit feedback through the online questionnaire or via email.

The Board will now take the time to review and analyse the individual submissions received during the consultation, following which it will revise and publish its draft Standards and Criteria for the three specialisms.

Following this process, the Board will communicate the next steps in the process towards the introduction of statutory regulation for Clinical, Counselling and Educational Psychologists.