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

The Deputy misunderstands how this index is put together. The whole enrolment in a school is taken into account. We do not designate children as disadvantaged. We take the entire enrolment of the school and we develop a composite index for all of the enrolment in the school based on the areas from which the children come. They are based on objective, scientific criteria, including demographic growth, dependency ratios, the education level of parents, the single parent rate, over-crowding, social class, occupation and unemployment rates. These are objective criteria that are used everywhere.

As the Deputy has acknowledged, this was not done in the past because the system was not objective. Some schools applied and others did not. Some principals were very industrious in collecting data and others were not. All sorts of people were involved in collecting data and making submissions. This will now be done on an objective basis that is independent of all political involvement and defined by criteria. Of course we will need to refine and improve it over time. This is an absolutely fair and objective basis for making selections.

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