Professor Áine Hyland:

I certainly will. I very much take the Deputy's point about the DEIS schools and the fact that, as he will be probably aware, the Department has revisited the designation. There are a number of schools which meet the criteria but which have not yet been given designated status and they are not getting the additional resources. The other concern I would have is that almost 50% of children and young people from backgrounds that are disadvantaged do not attend DEIS schools.

DEIS schools are very much in clusters. As the Deputy will be aware, one will have a school that will get the designation because it has X% of students above a certain level who are coming from socially-disadvantaged backgrounds. Apart from that there are individual students, possibly, for example, Traveller children, who are not close to a designated DEIS school and are attending ordinary non-designated schools. There are no additional resources as such available for them.

The other issue is they often miss out on some of the special access programmes that are additionally funded in higher education. Many of the access programmes are targeted specifically to DEIS schools, which is a good thing, but then young people who are from disadvantaged backgrounds but are not in a DEIS school are not eligible for some of those. While I am supportive of what exists already for DEIS schools and, indeed, DEIS should be enhanced in some areas because some areas are very disadvantaged, there are individual students and some schools which should be in the scheme and are not in the scheme yet.