Ms Gráinne Cullen:

In terms of the DEIS piece, first, we had a major review of the DEIS programme allocation model in recent years. It was published last summer by the OECD. We are drawing on it in all the work we are looking at with DEIS. The Minister has committed to a new DEIS programme and to publish the plans for that programme by the end of the year. Within it, and this would be relevant to the Traveller and Roma context too, there will be a DEIS plus programme. This will recognise there are a number of areas of the country where there is a very high level of educational disadvantage and disadvantage and deprivation in general. We are looking at what suite of supports can be provided. We have a number of governance and technical groups, etc., working on that and the Traveller piece comes into that too. The boundary in terms of what we can do will depend, obviously, on how the discussions on the Estimates and budgets go. The plan will be there, though. It may be over a phased basis, but there is very much a recognition of that need.

Regarding the DEIS rural piece, my understanding of the model we use is that it is the concentration of disadvantage and the multiplier effect within the school that actually has the impact. The Deputy is probably very familiar with this. When we look at the outcomes in rural schools, they are not as impacted in terms of the concentration of disadvantage. That is the reasoning as to why it is not there.

As the Deputy is probably aware, HSCL is a qualified teaching post. We have within our system pressure on teaching supply. Therefore, one of the things we are trying to look at is how we get that joined-up working within the posts we do have. The HSCLs are working very closely with our new link workers. The areas of the link workers are in the opening statement. They were picked based on high Traveller enrolment.