Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

Given many controversial things were said in and around the budget decision, I want to clarify the position. There was no reduction in DEIS band 1 and band 2 primary schools in the normal course of events. What was identified was that some DEIS schools had retained additional posts which had been allocated to them before DEIS was introduced in 2004, either under Breaking the Cycle or Giving Children An Even Break. It was those additional posts that were identified and, on balance and having looked at the likely impact, I reflected on this and decided to leave them there because of the scale of the deprivation in some of those schools. As a consequence of the change I have made, now two schools can be classified as DEIS band 1 with similar profiles in the community but one school will have more resources than the other because it happened to be allocated those resources in the past.

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