Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

If I may remind the Deputy, like himself, I, too, represent a constituency with an inner-city core with a high level of disadvantage. Over my time in Dublin South-East I have seen intergenerational poverty when dealing with the grandchildren of people I first dealt with many decades ago. I agree education is the great liberator. I would not be in this Chamber if it were not for the chance that I had the good fortune and opportunity to be educated to the level I have been, and I want that same chance to be applied to every other child of this republic.

There are no DEIS-designated teachers being taken out of any DEIS-band school. I refer to teachers who are identified as being in a school previous to the introduction of DEIS. We are now looking at the impact of operation of those teachers in combination with the other teachers in those schools. We are looking at the effectiveness of the total programme now that we have a Department of Children and Youth Affairs. As a teacher, Deputy McGrath will readily appreciate that education begins in the home and this can mean literacy or even feeding children with a decent breakfast so that they can go to school to learn on a full stomach and not on an empty one, as is the case, sadly, with many children in disadvantaged schools. We will examine the impact of the proposals suggested to see how they can be operated, ameliorated or changed in order that we do not have any consequence that is not intended.

I remind the Deputy and other Members that 60% of disadvantaged children go to normal, non-DEIS schools. There is no monopoly of misery nor of disadvantage in the DEIS schools per se. I acknowledge there is a significant level of disadvantage in those schools but 60% of disadvantaged children are not in those schools and we have to address the entirety of the education population. Even if the totality of the proposed changes were to be implemented, the impact would amount to 0.3% on the entire teaching cohort in the system. Both the Government and I want to liberate children from poverty by means of education in order that they can walk tall themselves. This is the intention and that is what we are trying to do by means of the review and report to be undertaken in the next four weeks.

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