Ms Chris Kelly:

Yes. Regarding the measuring of outcomes, under the new DEIS plan we will develop a monitoring and evaluation framework. The idea of this is to be able to look comprehensively at DEIS and all the various interventions that are there, inform future delivery of educational disadvantage policy and use it as a way of feeding back information to the system in order to ensure improved performance at the system level.

We have just established an advisory implementation group, which involves a range of stakeholders. One of the first sub-committees to be organised under that group will look at the issue of monitoring and evaluation, how we approach it, how we define the kinds of indicators we need to be timing and so on.

With regard to Traveller children, the system currently still has an additional €10 million being allocated for Traveller children. This is by the way of additional teaching posts and capitation grants for them. It is acknowledged that there is a need to be met. Within the DEIS plan we have specific actions in relation to Traveller education.