Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Okay. I look at my own county and specifically my own area back home in Enniscorthy, where there is a huge number of rural primary schools. The number of pupils attending each school ranges from 50 up to 200. That is the average for most primary schools in rural Ireland. As you move into the urban centres, you get bigger schools. St. Aidan's Primary School in Enniscorthy is the biggest primary school outside Dublin with almost 1,000 pupils. If Professor Downes was advising the Minister on how to roll out counselling services in those primary schools, what would he suggest? In rural Ireland, you could be talking about a distance of between 7 km and 10 km between the different schools. One school might have 50 students and another 7 km down the road might have 200 students. A further 7 km away, there might be a school with 100 pupils and then 5 km away there could be a school of almost 1,000 pupils. We should have a permanent service in the larger schools and then share it between three to five schools.

Going back to family resource centres and everything like that, there is a very small number of pockets in Country Wexford where there are family resource centres. There are only two in my home area that I am aware of. I do not know whether we should have more but there are other services that offer very similar services to those offered by the family resource centres in communities.