Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is new information, which the House has not been given previously. We were told something very different, namely, that there would be an update of all schools using the 2016 census data. The Department is still using the 2011 census data, which is already seven years out of date. As I said, all of these areas have become more disadvantaged, according to the HP deprivation index. The schools, which are in disadvantaged areas, should have been awarded DEIS status in the first instance. They have since become more disadvantaged. It appears the Department has been reviewing the programme it is running to categorise whether a school should be in the scheme or not for the past year. In the meantime, students and teachers have to wait and potential outcomes will not be reached. The Minister of State is shaking her head.

We were told last year that an update of the associated HP index was recently published and that the timeline for the process of assessment to be completed was the end of the first quarter of 2018. We are now in the third quarter and about to enter the fourth quarter of 2018 and the process is still not complete. Now the Minister of State, on behalf of the new Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Joe McHugh, is telling me and telling the students of Pobalscoil Ghaoth Dobhair, Scoil Náisiúnta Ghort an Choirce, Scoil Náisiúnta Rann na Feirste and Scoil Náisiúnta Mhín Tine Dé, as well as the other schools that should be afforded DEIS status, that it is not intended to extend the scheme to any further schools until quality assurance work on the model is complete. When did this start? Last year we were told that work would be done on this and a full year has passed. When will these students get certainty? When will the Department recognise that their areas have fallen into more disadvantage and therefore their schools, and through their schools the students themselves, need to be supported in the way that many other hundreds of schools have been supported through the DEIS programme. That is the key question that parents, pupils and teachers are asking. The Minister of State has a background as an educator and will understand that the teachers concerned at both primary and secondary level are tearing their hair out because they recognise where their pupils are coming from, understand they are from disadvantaged areas and cannot understand the red tape exercise that has been going on in the Department for over a year that is preventing them and their pupils from getting what they should have been given in the first place.

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