Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy and hear him clearly but I point out that the 2019 budget saw the largest Vote ever for education of €10.8 billion. To be fair, we must target our resources and that is what we are doing. We have to make sure that the children in most need get the resources they require. As I said earlier, the underlying principle for inclusion in the DEIS school programme is evidenced by the need to make provision of key supports to schools catering for very concentrated levels of disadvantaged pupils. Schools which were not included in the DEIS programme in 2017 are those which were not identified as having the highest levels of concentrated disadvantage among their pupil cohort.

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