Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have been tabling questions on the new DEIS programme since October of last year. I have asked general questions, first, to ascertain the criteria being used and, second, specific questions about schools in my constituency of Tipperary and particularly for the five primary schools based in Tipperary town. The principals, staff and management in all schools put forward compelling cases to have their schools included and backed up their case with credible and detailed statistics.

We all understood that the Department was using a new system to decide on the schools that would or would not qualify. We were told that the deprivation index the Department would use would bring fairness and transparency to the whole process. We must remember that the new system no longer allowed input from staff and management of the schools.

When the Minister made the announcement of 79 new schools being added to the programme for 2017 we were very disappointed that Tipperary town primary schools were not included. However, it is at this point that it became clear that the process was in no way transparent or fair. Despite promises of all schools being informed of where they stood, all queries and questions were met with stonewalling answers.

The group of schools in Tipperary town that I am talking about made a strong case even after the announcement and visited the Dáil to press their case. However, at no point in answers that I received to parliamentary questions was I informed that 257 schools nationally had met the criteria but were not included in the announcement. Why did that information have to come to us through the media? Surely that information was relevant, particularly when there was an emphasis on fairness and transparency in the new deciding criteria, the deprivation index. Why was this information not offered up openly, considering all the questions that were being asked inside and outside this House?

What is clear now is that a further 257 schools were identified as qualifying for support, using the new deprivation index, but were not being included in the new DEIS programme. Was that the reason for not offering this information to all concerned?

Was this deemed reason enough not to offer this information to all concerned? Surely this was a mistake. Surely these facts would have been better understood if they were shared fairly and transparently in response to questions asked here. More importantly, they would have been better understood if they were shared fairly and transparently with the schools themselves. It would have given the schools a better understanding of how the new deprivation index worked, and would have offered them hope that they could be included in a new DEIS programme in the future.

It is wrong for this process to exclude input from staff and management of the schools. These are the people working on the ground who know the children they are teaching individually, particularly the children who are most at risk. They fully understand the communities these children come from and the difficulties they face, and it is wrong to exclude them. Therefore, at the very least, I urge the Minister to review again the criteria used in deciding who qualifies and to allow input from school staff and management. This episode has shown once again that there is an effort to centralise decision making, and proves that a centrally focused decision-making process is achieved at the cost of fairness and transparency.

See this speech in context