Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have almost finished. I will ask about two of the Minister's positive initiatives. She has just answered my question about the solar panel scheme so I do not need to labour the point. It will open tomorrow. I am looking forward to that. I commend the Minister on leading on that. In-school counselling has been rolled out on a pilot basis in many counties. I hope the Minister will tell the committee, if she has not already announced it, that the scheme will go nationwide because we need it to do so. It is incredible to think a child can go down the corridor to someone who is trained in psychotherapy or play therapy, instead of having to queue on a waiting list for months to go to someone outside the school. They are both incredible schemes. I would love to hear whether the pilot will be rolled out.

We need to stop pegging DEIS reviews against each census. The census rolls around on a five-year cycle. I can think of environments, especially towns with rental accommodation, where there is huge transience. I know of one house that two high earning medical professionals live in, but four months ago, the same house had two people who were struggling and availing of the social welfare system. There is that kind of transience from high to low income where both ends of the spectrum of household income is represented in one rental house. There is a huge amount of transience. Travellers move to transient sites. Ukrainians move to accommodation centres. The fluctuation in enrolment is huge. We are no longer in a static situation where a school has an enrolment of 220 pupils who all have a similar socioeconomic profile. That day has gone and our DEIS reviews need to not be pegged to the five-year census cycle. The worry is that the census captures a moment in time. A child who is in fifth or sixth class will almost have left the secondary school system by the time the data set is being used to determine the DEIS status of a school. It needs to be more fluid and flexible. I know the Minster understands because she worked as in the school system for a long time.

My two questions are about the census and DEIS and whether the in-school pilot on counselling will be expanded. I thank the Chair for his latitude.