Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

The reality is that guidance counsellors help children of all ages and are more important, if I might say so, in the role they have played in encouraging children to complete school than in filling out the CAO form. At least, at the stage of filling out the CAO form, one has got them that far. As has been said by many of my colleagues, because of the much more complicated society in which we live today and because a much greater proportion of our children are going to secondary school, there are, as a consequence, many more issues to be resolved than there were in the past. There are children with learning difficulties or significant disabilities who would not have been in mainstream schooling in the past. There are children who come from backgrounds that are not supportive of education. As the Minister himself said, 60% of disadvantaged pupils do not attend DEIS schools. He is pulling the legs from the stool that is under the weakest of pupils. As a parent who has seen his children through school, I have always made the point that those who are endowed in one way or another - by way of background, access, support and so on - will probably make it through even if supports are pulled away. The people who always lose in that situation are those from vulnerable backgrounds or who have other things - personal or societal issues, or issues to do with background - that need dealing with. What the Minister is doing is to pull the supports away from these people.

The Minister is saying that the principal can allocate teachers to guidance counselling duties. However, he is changing the service from being guaranteed in all schools to being at the discretion of the principal. We have reports already that guidance counsellors are now being allotted teaching hours away from guidance counselling. Something that was ring-fenced, autonomous and ex quota is now being added to the main area of decision making. This is the beginning of the slippery slope.

The Minister, when speaking last night, said that 42% of second-level schools - that is, 730 schools - do not have a full-time guidance counsellor. Of course that is a factual truth. However, every school is affected by this policy, because the smaller schools have a pro rata allocation of guidance counselling, which is also being cut. This idea that there are many schools which are immune to this cut just because they do not have a full-time guidance counsellor ignores the reality of large parts of Ireland in which there are small secondary schools. I presume, in line with what the Government is doing with the primary schools, it is probably targeting the smaller secondary schools as well, but we will leave that for another day.

Cé mhéad ama atá fágtha agam, a Chathaoirligh?

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