Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

It is an enormous exercise considering that 3,200 primary schools must fill in, perhaps, 20 fields of information. The information cannot even be filed electronically. We had the data from the previous year last September. I am hoping to address the issue but the Department's data system is not great and, unlike the Department of Social Protection, the data do not speak to each other.

I agree with the Deputy in regard to DEIS. This is not an attack on DEIS whatsoever, although it suited some people to understand it that way. This is an identification of inequality within the DEIS system, whereby certain schools have retained more resources than the school down the road with the same characteristics of deprivation.

To answer Deputy Crowe's question, I am going to wait until I get up-to-date facts before deciding my options. I am not in a position today to indicate what I will do. I now hope to have the necessary facts within the next three and a half weeks given that last week I indicated a timeframe of four weeks. At the end of the process, and irrespective of what decisions are made, it will go out in a general allocation to all the primary schools. As we have brought back the process by three months, there will be sufficient time for any school to appeal its allocation and provide for the recruitment, retention or deployment of resources for next September.

See this speech in context