Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)

I am pleased to have the opportunity to address the House on the school referred to by the Deputy. Notwithstanding the increase of €302 million in the education budget for 2009, which is a real achievement in the current economic climate, a number of tough and difficult decisions had to be taken. The 2009 budget required difficult choices to be made across all areas of public expenditure and decisions were made in order to control expenditure and ensure sustainability in the long term. In this respect, education, while protected to a much greater extent than most other areas of public expenditure, could not be entirely spared, and the Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, acknowledges the impact of funding restrictions in a number of areas, including at school level. However, these are the inevitable result of the challenging economic environment and the need to manage Exchequer resources prudently.

DEIS, the action plan for educational inclusion, provides for a standardised system for identifying levels of disadvantage and an integrated school support programme. DEIS brings together and builds upon a number of existing interventions in schools with concentrated levels of disadvantage. The process of identifying schools for participation in DEIS was managed by the educational research centre on behalf of the Department of Education and Science and supported by quality assurance work co-ordinated through the Department's regional offices and the inspectorate.

Mercy College is among the schools that were judged by an independent identification process in 2005 not to have a sufficient level of disadvantage among their pupils to warrant their inclusion in DEIS. A review mechanism was put in place to address the concerns of schools that did not qualify for inclusion in DEIS but regarded themselves as having a level of disadvantage which was of a scale sufficient to warrant their inclusion in the programme.

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