Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

While a key priority for me is to continue to prioritise and target resources at schools with the most concentrated levels of educational disadvantage, the current economic climate and the challenge to meet significant targets on reducing public expenditure limits opportunities and means there is no capacity to provide for additionality to the DEIS programme, including the selection of further schools.

The report on the net effect, in terms of posts, of budget measures on DEIS band 1 and band 2 urban primary schools that still had additional posts allocated under disadvantage schemes predating DEIS was published earlier this week. On foot of the analysis in this report, the Government has now agreed to my proposal to retain a total of 235 posts, on a concessionary basis, in DEIS band 1 and band 2 schools.

In regard to the reallocation of posts under the general allocation model, I can now confirm that DEIS band 1 schools will be given an additional allocation of 0.2 of a post where the school has less than 200 pupils and 0.4 of a post where the school has 200 or more pupils. My Department's social inclusion unit will now write to these and all DEIS band 1 schools separately in regard to their staffing allocations for the 2012-2013 school year.

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