Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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268. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated cost of providing every special school in Ireland with access to a guidance counsellor. [47452/21]

Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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At present, special schools do not have guidance counsellor teacher allocations.

The matter of guidance counselling in special schools was considered as part of the Indecon Review of Career Guidance, which report was  published in April 2019.  The report includes four recommendations relating specifically to guidance counselling to promote inclusion. 

The recommendations in this report were considered by an internal taskforce to examine each of the recommendations and develop an implementation response to each.  The first task was to consider options for the establishment of the support organisation to oversee technology facilitated guidance services. 

While progress in this matter has been impacted by COVID-19, arrangements are now in place with the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS) on the implementation of the recommendations and this work will be overseen by an inter-departmental steering group. 

The Department of Education will now lead on the actions to promote inclusion in special schools and I understand that this work has recently commenced.