Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Although everyone in a school has a guidance and counselling duty of care to students, guidance counselling is a profession which has developed very steadily and incrementally over a number of years. Guidance counsellors are now highly trained professionals who are able to give a service which is much wider and more rounded than it was in the past when the role was more about giving career guidance. The impact of the cut, whereby after two years only 41% of the previous number of one to one sessions take place, is a drastic reduction in a very crucial service. The Minister needs to examine the issue. It is not acceptable that when students need the service and knock on the door of the guidance counsellor, he or she is not available because he or she is in a classroom, which is the case in many instances. Students cannot access the service. As we have seen from the figures at third level, it is having a very real impact in terms of students not going down the avenue best suited to them when they leave secondary school. I ask the Minister to revisited this issue in the next budget and not leave it for his successors to pick up on.

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