Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)

It behoves anyone in the House not to hide behind some clamour of smoke to suggest 42% of schools will not be affected.

The Department of Education and Skills completed a spending review and published it on its website in September. An option was included in this document which spoke about terminating the dedicated staffing allocation for guidance counselling. There was nothing about providing an allocation from another. Instead, the review spoke about redeploying guidance teachers. To suggest the Minister was not aware of this is ludicrous when in September he considered the obliteration of guidance counselling from our schools in advance of the budget. That is the mindset of the Minister, his party and the Government. The obliteration of the guidance counselling service is outrageous.

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