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

I am happy to clarify that. No school applied and no school was excluded. The situation is that we provided €15 million extra for disadvantaged schools in this year's budget, in line with the plan we had published. As a result of that we have provided for 79 additional schools to join those schools already in the disadvantaged category. We have expanded the number of schools in the programme. In the context of planning for the future, my Department looked at the possibility of further extensions to the disadvantaged programme. That is where the figure the Deputy has quoted came from. It was in a reply to a freedom of information request. The Department was looking at possible scenarios, one of which was to extend the scope of disadvantage to provide for additional schools.

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