2026-01-14

I see that the Minister for education is not here. I believe she has an engagement this morning. It is very rare for me to get the opportunity to raise a Topical Issue so it is very difficult to not have the Minister here. I am not questioning the Minister of State's ability to answer the question. I am sure he is very well prepared. However, it is very difficult when you go to the bother and do a lot of research into an area only for the Minister not to be here. I find that a little bit frustrating. Now that I have given out, I thank the Minister of State very much for being here to answer my question, which is about the plans for the inclusion of schools in the DEIS plus scheme. I am happy that the Department has answered calls for DEIS plus, which a number of school communities, particularly around this city but also throughout the country, have asked for. It addresses the fact that the original DEIS model has not been the panacea people thought it would be in addressing educational disadvantage. While it does have positives, there have been gaps in services and it has not achieved what it set out to in the depth that it was thought it would. It is really important that the new strategy being implemented is rigorous and methodical and that it is evaluated and monitored appropriately. The way in which it is evaluated must be much better than those for the previous schemes so that we can learn what is and is not working early on. I am a little bit worried that this strategy will only tickle the wicked problem of educational disadvantage and that it will not actually be able to address it fully. From the answers I have received in writing about this and from watching other debates that happened in November 2025, I see that schools will not be required to apply. Schools were asked to apply the very first time DEIS was implemented. There were advantages to that because schools were able to say exactly what the issues were. The second time DEIS was looked at, schools did not have to apply because metrics were put in place. There were difficulties with that because you did not get the on-the-ground knowledge. You can get data from the census, the HP deprivation index and things like that but unless you know what is going on in schools, you do not know what is going on in schools. That is one of the difficulties. The reply to my question in November stated: The DEIS Plus scheme will provide additional support to schools with the highest levels of need, in line with the Government’s commitment. I keep saying the word "schools" for a reason. We are trying to support children and young people. It is not about schools. Schools are the conduit but we need to use the terms "children" and "young people", which the reply does go on to do. The reply continued: It will target a cohort of schools with high concentrations of children and young people experiencing intergenerational disadvantage where there is a significant gap in outcomes and there are barriers to those children and young people achieving their potential. Intergenerational disadvantage needs to be taken together with intergenerational trauma. The reality on the ground in schools is that young people are not succeeding to the best of their ability because of intergenerational trauma and disadvantage. You cannot separate them out. You also cannot find that data on the HP deprivation index. That is one way of looking at it but you have to be able to see what is going on in a family. If they are living in private rented accommodation, that is not taken into consideration. If you are living in a fancy housing estate but are on the housing assistant payment, HAP, because you happened to get a landlord who would rent there, that is not counted. That is a big disadvantage when trying to identify those families who need additional support. DEIS needs to follow the child and not only the school.

The Minister, Deputy Naughton, sends her apologies. For my part, I was a teacher for 17 years. I fully concur with many of the comments the Deputy has made. She is right that the importance of this issue is such that it requires a rigorous and methodical approach and evaluation by everybody. I have always been of the same view as the Deputy that it is about following the student. She is right about that and I agree with her. I thank her for raising this very important issue. Educational disadvantage is a key priority for the Minister and the wider Government. The DEIS programme is a key policy initiative for addressing concentrated disadvantage at school level. Where I disagree with the Deputy is that I think it has worked quite well. The Deputy is right that it is not a panacea for everything but it has worked quite well. When schools did not attain DEIS status, they were completely discommoded. There was a disconnect. That was a mistake. Supplementing universal supports, the DEIS programme provides a fair and targeted way to address concentrated educational disadvantage that promotes equity and meets the needs of children and young people. The DEIS programme currently supports almost 1,200 primary and post-primary schools, reaching approximately 260,000 students with an annual investment of €180 million. This year's budget allocates an additional €16.5 million, which will rise to €48 million in next year's budget, to support the implementation of a new DEIS strategy and introduce the DEIS plus scheme, which will commence this year. The new DEIS strategy, which will include the DEIS plus scheme, will be published in the first quarter of this year. At its core, this strategy will focus on improving the opportunities and achievement levels of children at risk of educational disadvantage, developing more innovative approaches to tackling education disadvantage and working towards a more flexible system of supports to ensure that a school can receive the right support at the right time. The Minister is committed to narrowing the performance gap between DEIS and non-DEIS schools and introducing innovative solutions to address disadvantage. Recent research, including the OECD review of resourcing schools to address educational disadvantage in Ireland, has highlighted the role of the DEIS programme in providing an education system that consistently outperforms many other OECD countries but also exhibits relative socioeconomic fairness, making it one of the stronger performers globally. However, this research has also highlighted that important differences in outcomes persist for students who experience very high levels of deprivation. That is why it is important to note that the Government is committed to introducing a DEIS plus scheme to provide additional supports to schools with the highest levels of students at most risk of educational disadvantage. I hope this will take on board the Deputy's point about following the student. It will also be a model that tackles disadvantage. At its core, it must be able to be assessed in the right way. As a teacher of many years, I agree with the Deputy on that. She made reference to the intergenerational piece. The new DEIS programme will target a cohort of schools with high concentrations of children and young people experiencing that intergenerational disadvantage, where there is a significant gap in outcomes and there are barriers to those children and young people achieving their potential. I see this in my own Department, where we invest millions of euro every year. We really need to have a serious conversation about that intergenerational piece. A DEIS plus design advisory group was established by the Department to inform the development of the DEIS plus scheme. This group includes principals, home school community liaisons and school completion programme co-ordinators who work directly with children and young people experiencing high intergenerational disadvantage. In 2024 and 2025, the Department carried out consultation workshops. The work is focused on informing key policy development. I look forward to working with the Deputy on the matter. I will bring her remarks back to the Minister.

I am glad to see that we are on the same page with regard to following the child. To clarify, I do think DEIS has been extremely positive. However, it is not as positive as people thought it was going to be. When DEIS was brought in, people thought that schools would automatically become able to answer all the questions over time. They cannot because, as the Minister of State has rightly said, his Department is also responsible for intergenerational disadvantage. We cannot just pigeonhole this in the Department of Education and Youth. It has to be seen throughout Departments because, to deal with intergenerational disadvantage, we need to deal with intergenerational trauma. That is a very large thing. We in this country are only starting to understand how much it affects young people. I am glad that the Minister of State mentioned the school completion programme. As I have said several times in here, I was a school completion co-ordinator for 18 years before I became a TD. I am very proud of that role. I would not like to see it eroded. I look forward to the Department finalising the employment and governance structure of the school completion programme, but that is for a different day. DEIS plus should not only be about the funding it will bring. The funding is vitally important, but it is about the services that are provided to children. The pupil-teacher ratio being reduced in DEIS schools, particularly in DEIS plus schools, is really important, as are multidisciplinary teams, which are able to go in to address specifically, not generally, the needs of children and young people and see where they are at. I do not want to see professionals coming in to tell teachers how to do it. Teachers are teachers; they are not therapists. We need to make sure that professional therapists are in there who can support those children at the worst times of their lives, when they are dealing with things going on for them. I will also say, and this is not talked about quite a lot, that I want to see an opportunity for the arts, as part of social inclusion, to be brought back into schools. This was removed a number of years ago, but it is so important. I know it is something that is being worked on by Professor Paul Downes and people in DCU. Professor Downes is part of that working strategy.

I thank the Deputy for raising many pertinent points, which I do not disagree with. She is right that it is not just about funding. During my own career, it was not just about funding. This is about that wraparound service and that engagement. It is not just about being able to measure but being able to have students reach their full potential. It is not just about literacy and numeracy. The Deputy mentioned the arts but it is also the socialisation piece and, for example, the hot school meals programme. She is right. I will make the point that the Government is committed, in a cross-departmental way, to tackling child poverty. We see education as the enabler to achieve that. The development of the DEIS plus scheme will be a further positive step in our commitment to lifting more children out of poverty and giving them the future they deserve. I will take back the points the Deputy made. I genuinely share some of the views she has. We get that because we are on the ground. We are in the classroom and the school community. We are engaging with home school liaisons. I am a former director of adult education and taught the applied leaving certificate. There is also the issue of school completion. It is not just about the funding piece. We cannot say that we will allocate X amount of money and then just throw that at it. That does not always work, as we both know. The new DEIS strategy to be published this year will set a future roadmap that will support children and young people at risk of educational disadvantage. It is to be hoped it will empower them to reach their full potential. The strategy will focus on improving opportunity and achievement levels for children and young people, but it will also ensure that in the school community we can develop more innovative approaches to tackling educational disadvantage and tackle that intergenerational piece we have to keep working at. The point is, which maybe goes back to what the Deputy is trying to say, it should be a flexible system of supports to ensure the school can receive the right support at the right time for the student, person, pupil or child, whether they are a teenager or primary school student. I look forward to working with the Deputy on this. The Government is committed to tackling educational disadvantage and reducing child poverty. I thank her for raising the matter.