Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)

As all Members are aware, we are in a very difficult budgetary situation. Like every other Department, the Department of Education and Skills has to find significant savings. The Minister referred to these in the Chamber only a few days ago, stating that we had to achieve savings of the order of €70 million this year, another €70 million next year and more than €100 million in the final year of the period, 2014.

A third of all public sector employees work in this sector. Unlike many other countries, and fortunately, in one sense, for us, our school-going population is rising rapidly. The current economic climate and the challenge to meet significant targets and reduce that expenditure means there is no capacity at present to add to the DEIS programme. There are a number of schools which did not participate in the orginal survey in 2005. Others that were not part of the survey process have tried on numerous occasions since then to gain DEIS status. This was not possible at the time and is impossible at present. That is not to say that at some point in the future when things are better from a financial and fiscal point of view that we will not reopen the possibility of additionality to the DEIS programme. The only honest or frank position one can adopt at this point is to tell the school at Inver, and many others like it, that change of status is impossible now but may become possible at some point in the future.

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