Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 2 December 2025
666. Deputy Seán Ó Fearghaíl asked the Minister for Health if she will address the concerns regarding the recent publication of the Standards and Criteria for Counsellors and Psychotherapists by CORU, raised in correspondence (details supplied); and if she will make a statement on the matter. [68063/25]
View answerAs the Deputy will be aware, CORU is Ireland’s multi-profession health and social care regulator. With extensive experience in introducing regulation to health and social care professions for the first time, CORU has already established twelve registers for a range of professions. CORU’s work ensures the protection of the public by regulating the work of over 30,000 health and social care professionals.
Counsellors and psychotherapists perform a vital role, providing therapeutic care to often vulnerable people. Regulation is being introduced to these professions to protect the public, ensuring that care provided is of a consistently high standard and always by suitably qualified individuals.
The Counsellors and Psychotherapists Registration Board was established in 2019 and since that time has been working to progress regulation of both professions.
In July 2025 CORU published two key documents for each of these professions:
For each profession there is:
Standards of Proficiency• , which set out the minimum knowledge and skills required for entry to the Register.
Criteria for Education and Training Programmes• , which set the requirements for how professional training programmes are designed and managed to ensure graduates consistently meet the Standards of Proficiency.
These requirements set out the level of education and clinical training needed to practise safely and effectively. Ireland is now the first country in the world to establish distinct regulatory standards for entry to both professions. Setting these standards has now laid the foundations so education programmes can be designed to ensure consistency of education and training and the standards for entry into practice for both professions.
Under EU Directive 2018/958, and the transposing Irish legislation (S.I. No. 413 of 2022), a proportionality assessment is required prior to the introduction of regulation of a profession. Throughout its work to introduce regulation of both professions, CORU has ensured compliance with the Directive, including assessing the proportionality of the Standards and Criteria.
As part of this work to ensure compliance with the Directive, the 2023 public consultation explicitly sought stakeholder feedback on the proportionality of the proposed Standards and Criteria before these were finalised by the Board.
CORU continues to engage regularly with my Department to ensure compliance with EU requirement and remains committed to transparent, fair, and proportionate regulation that protects the public and supports practitioners. A regulatory risk assessment was conducted by CORU and is available on their website and a proportionality assessment on the Standards of Proficiency and Criteria for Education and Training was conducted, submitted to my Department and forwarded onto DFHERIS for onward submission to the Commission.
In relation to entry level qualifications, the National Framework of Qualifications thresholds - Level 8 for Counsellors and Level 9 for Psychotherapists - relate to educational entry routes, not to hierarchies of professional value or scope of practice after registration. Both professions will remain equally accountable to CORU’s Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics and subject to the same requirements for Continuing Professional Development.
The differentiation between counselling at Level 8 and psychotherapy at Level 9 reflects the differences in the depth, complexity, and autonomy required at entry to practice.
The standards provide clarity for education providers, employers, regulators, and the public about the threshold for safe practice without constraining the broader evolution of either profession.
On issues such as personal therapy and clinical supervision CORU’s competency-based framework ensures that essential attributes such as self-awareness, reflexivity, and ethical judgment are achieved through validated educational methods, including clinical supervision, reflective practice, and experiential learning.
CORU’s criteria mandate structured, practice-integrated supervision that enables supervisors and educators to directly evaluate proficiency and ensure safe practice. This approach provides robust, verifiable safeguards while maintaining flexibility for different theoretical modalities. The standards set the threshold for safe and effective practice, without restricting innovation or allowing education providers to exceed these minimum requirements at their discretion.
I am confident that CORU’s work will bring clear benefits for public protection. The framework has been designed to strengthen standards of practice while ensuring that training pathways and workforce supply are not adversely affected.
I am assured that CORU will continue to engage closely with education providers, professional bodies, and other stakeholders as the regulatory process advances, keeping public protection at the centre of this work.
I am eager to see this work progressed so that two very important professions are finally regulated, in the interest of public protection.
