Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Martin suggested that the guidance plan should never use people of appropriate skills to provide appropriate support. The idea of the guidance plan is that it is a whole of school responsibility. The plan provides that if a school had within its staff number a science teacher who was very well equipped, who had access to information and who was well placed, the guidance plan would have the flexibility to deploy that teacher with those specific skills to provide guidance on choice of career or education path to pupils. The concept of a guidance plan is not to find some way of outfoxing guidance counsellors to try to provide this resource from some other element of the school. The purpose of having that flexibility is to offer the student the best possible support available within the school so that if there is such a gifted individual, the guidance plan would make provision. That is all it is doing but to meet the concerns expressed by Deputies, I am conducting a survey to establish the practice within schools. If there is a concern in this regard, we will be able to address it. I envisage the guidance plan as being predominantly delivered by guidance counsellors but I recognise that if it is a whole school responsibility, there would be some element of the plan that may be delivered by other staff members who have a particular aptitude for doing it.