Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To reassure the Deputy, it is not the catchment of the school. It is the individual children and from where they are drawn. A school could be in one catchment area but drawing its children from a different one. That will be picked up. It looks at the individual child and sources back to the street on which the child lives. That is the model used. It is being applied fairly. There is no question of unfair treatment. A school can seek a review. It picked up, as I said, three schools in our area, and 30 nationwide, to be uplifted. They were at the highest level of disadvantage and they were not being recognised in that category.

In terms of resources, €15 million in a full year is going into this. It is worth recalling also that I am putting €54 million into upgrading resource teaching, with 900 extra teachers. They will be going to schools where there is the highest level of learning need. We are not just approaching this through the DEIS model, but also through the resource teaching model. The objective that I am setting is to get to the child with the greatest need through both models. I am also trying to pilot new approaches. In the case of schools like the one in Darndale, which we visited and which is doing really interesting things, clusters have been built for the improved teaching of children. That sort of cluster building will be encouraged and good practice will be shared. We are trying to do much broader things than just listing the school number.

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