Many primary schools in working-class areas of Dublin have been deprived of psychological services following the announcement by the Eastern Health Board that it is closing this service to new referrals.
In a letter to principals in the Crumlin, Tallaght, Ballyfermot and Clondalkin areas, the board said there were "well over 100 children" waiting for psychological assessments.
A board spokeswoman said this backlog would take six months to clear. The board's letter said that the decision to close its limited psychological assessment service to new referrals "for the foreseeable future" was taken because, given the number of children waiting, "it does not seem reasonable to create false expectations by continuing to take children on to the list".
The board spokeswoman emphasised that the service it provided was a "token" one, with one part-time psychologist covering the whole of south-west Dublin. Similar token services existed in other areas of greater Dublin. She said the board's understanding was that the service would become the responsibility of the Department of Education and Science in the future.
A Department of Education spokesman said there had been preliminary discussions with the Department of Health on the co-ordination of psychological services at primary schools between the various agencies.
Eventually all the services will be the responsibility of a new National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS), announced by the Minister for Education in February. Its full implementation will take five years and it will eventually employ 200 psychologists. When the NEPS is set up later this year it will liaise with the health boards.
The principal of St Kilian's Senior National School in Castleview, Tallaght, Mr Garrett Edge, said both his school and the adjoining junior school had a significant number of children with Attention Deficit Disorder and behavioural problems.
"Normally, if we can put together the required paperwork for 12 children with special needs, we would be assigned a special teacher. But to do that paperwork we need a psychologist's or psychiatrist's report for each child. If the present health board system disappears, we have no way of getting those reports."
He said some of his pupils' families would be able to afford a private psychological assessment, but many would not. His experience was that until now the Department of Education's psychologists dealt largely with schools which were designated as disadvantaged, which St Kilian's was not, and therefore "nothing is done for our children, who are caught in the middle".
The Department's own psychological service has been seriously understaffed for many years. The Teachers' Union of Ireland president, Mr Joe Carolan, said recently that the present ratio of one psychologist to 13,000 pupils was totally inadequate.
In the past year 15 new Department psychologists were recruited, bringing the total to 53, or 69 if psychologists available through VECs and other agencies are included. In February Mr Martin announced the appointment of 25 new psychologists as a step towards the establishment of the new autonomous agency, the NEPS.
It is widely accepted that educational psychologists in primary schools play a key role in helping children, many of them from difficult home backgrounds, with learning and behavioural problems.
The report of the planning group for the National Educational Psychological Service estimated that more than 11 per cent of the school population would be referred to a psychologist at some stage in their school career.