Access to counters from within copy ?

Are there facilities (proposed or current) within CSS
to allow access to counters using symbolic names ?

I am currently writing (in HTML) as the content
for an LI element within an OL :

	"Repeat 5 -- 9 for <Dept> 2-Col and <Dept> 3-Col,
	 with the following differences :"

where I have inserted "5" and "9" in "5 -- 9" by visually
inspecting the list numbering.  If I were to subsequently
insert a list item before list item 9, one or both of
these values would become incorrect.  At the moment,
I cannot see how "generated content" would be sufficient
to allow symbolic access to these values, but I may
well be (and hope I am) wrong ...

Philip Taylor