Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

The removal of legacy posts was intended to deal with cases in which there were two DEIS schools in a particular area or half a dozen DEIS schools in a particular area of disadvantage where it was possible to have two schools in the same socioeconomic grouping and locality, typically in the Deputy's constituency or the inner city part of my constituency, and one school would have more resources than the other simply because it had persuaded previous Ministers to leave intact the original relatively arbitrary measures introduced without a scientific analysis and basis and managed to hold on to the new resources coming to them. For historical reasons - prior to the introduction of the DEIS programme which, from memory, was introduced in 2004 or thereabouts and on the basis of scientific criteria and a rational basis by the Department in both urban and rural areas - certain individual schools in areas of disadvantage, for whatever reasons – there were no standard criteria, as such - were included in different programmes at different times. All that we ever targeted were the legacy or additional posts. They are being reduced in some cases. In others, because of the nature and scale of the schools involved, they are being left intact.

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