Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

As Deputy Crowe stated, the DEIS programme has had a positive effect on tackling educational disadvantage. That is clear from an ESRI report, and also from the Educational Research Centre in St. Patrick's College, which showed that in the period 2007 to 2010, there were significantly higher scores for children under the DEIS programmes in reading and mathematics and that those extra supports in the classroom were particularly important.

The Minister, and maybe more so his parliamentary colleagues, gave a clear message to the schools affected that the Minister's review and that of the Department that he announced in February would reverse the decisions to remove the DEIS supports.

I have had quite a number of schools in touch with me which have received letters from the Department and they are extremely concerned about the news conveyed. According to St. Francis junior national school in Priorswood, there was no mention of legacy posts in a letter from the Department regarding the staffing schedule. Our Lady Immaculate senior school Darndale currently has nine mainstream plus two legacy posts and it has been allocated its staffing schedule for 2013, which is one of ten mainstream teachers plus one legacy post, but its enrolment has increased. We can understand that if enrolment has fallen, it has a bearing on the overall teaching and support staff, but that is not the position in that school. That school is also losing a learning support teacher.

One other school that we all have seen on television, and the teachers of which we have heard speak in broadcast media, is St. Laurence O'Toole junior boys' school in North Wall in Dublin. It has one principal and eight assistant teachers, but from September it will have only five assistant teachers. They clearly understood from some of the Minister's parliamentary colleagues and some of his party's public representatives that they would be retaining their staffing complement. The news from the Department has come as a great shock, surprise and disappointment to those schools.

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