Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Those who hold themselves out to be counsellors can be regulated. The point I was trying to get at in regard to the very incisive point by my Fianna Fáil colleagues is there will be a lot of people who will give out advice. For example, one could get advice from one's local priest in the confessional. They do not purport to be professionals and there is no way of regulating that. However, one knows what one is getting there. If one goes to a family member, a priest or member of the clergy, one knows upon what it is based. The difficulty is when one attends a person purporting to be a qualified professional giving objective advice but the information one gets is profoundly wrong. That is the area we need to regulate.