One of the ways in which I am committed to ensuring consistent and high standards in the delivery of community-based counselling and psychotherapy services is through the regulation of counsellors and psychotherapists by CORU, Ireland’s multi-profession health and social care regulator.
CORU’s role is to protect the public by regulating the health and social care professions designated under the Health and Social Care Professionals Act 2005 (as amended). The Counsellors and Psychotherapists Registration Board (CPRB) was established in 2019 and since that time has been working to progress regulation of both professions. CORU published Standards of Proficiency and Criteria for Education and Training for each of these professions last summer and is now engaging with education providers in this regard.
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.
The Department of Health is currently working to set out the long-term workforce planning needs of the health and social care sector in Ireland’s Future Health and Social Care Workforce Plan.
The plan will project the workforce required to meet the needs of the population over the next 15 years, including for mental health services. The plan has been guided by Sharing the Vision, Ireland’s ambitious, multifaceted national mental health policy to enhance the provision of mental health services and supports across a broad continuum from mental health promotion, prevention, early intervention and specialist mental health service delivery during the period 2020-2030.
As such, the workforce plan recognises the requirement to plan for the expansion of staffing in mental health services, including counsellors and psychotherapists.
The government is focused on achieving and maintaining optimum mental health in Ireland. HSE WTE numbers working in Mental Health increased by 7% between year-end 2019 and June 2025, with 99% of that increase relating to posts directly involved in patient care. The availability of suitably qualified workforce has been highlighted as challenge at a time when there has been record levels of investment in mental health services with an increase of 43.7% over the lifetime of the last government and totalling almost €1.5 billion in Budget 2025.
Implementation of Sharing the Vision is guided by a detailed Implementation Plan, with regular policy implementation progress reports published on the Department of Health website. Implementation of the policy is overseen by an independently chaired National Implementation and Monitoring Committee. The current Implementation Plan 2025-2027 for Sharing the Vision was published in April 2025.
