Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would like to thank the Minister for coming this evening to reply. Some schools were disappointed and surprised that they were not included in the delivering equality of opportunity in schools, DEIS, programme. I understand that it is a process whereby the Department, as far as it has access to data, has used objective data to try to determine which schools should be part of the scheme. My understanding is that the primary online database, POD, information given is name, address, Eircode postcode, PPSN, pupil ID number, gender, nationality, whether the mother tongue is English or Irish, ethnic or cultural background - presumably that means Roma, Traveller, etc. - and religion. The other source of data is the Pobal HP deprivation index for small area data. My understanding is that data is into the mixer. It is a little bit of one and a little bit of the other. Which of those details is the Department using? Clearly, as the Minister has said previously, it uses the small area data. What weighting is given to each index? For example, the Department knows where the children live because it has their Eircode postcodes and knows their nationality. These are the kinds of questions that I think need to be clarified. What happens if one parent is Irish and one is non-Irish? Does it depend on where the child was born? What happens if both parents are naturalised Irish and a child was born here, etc.? Because the information the Department has is fairly scant, how does it work this out? Schools authorities will look at this and will say:

Hang on the second. Was the information we gave accurate, and did it reflect all of the possibilities? We never realised that such a major decision would be made on our application to the scheme based on this data.

Another issue that arises relates to ethnic or cultural background. Let us take it that that means Roma and Traveller ethnicities. The Minister specifically mentions, in fairness to her, educational disadvantage experienced by Traveller and Roma learners. Here again we might challenge. While I do know how we will deal it, I want to highlight it here this evening. Many people from Traveller or Roma background might not identify as such for various reasons. There were some interesting examples of that on the television on “Claire Byrne Live” last night. People said that they hid their identity for fear that it would be a disadvantage to them. I recall a Traveller parent who came to me. She was really suspicious when she was enrolling her child as to why the school wanted to know whether the parent was a Traveller because she felt that if she said, “Yes”, it might be a reason that the school would use - I knew the school would not have used it, but she did not know that - to not accept the pupil in the school.

I know of two schools in particular that seem to have an odd situation. One is a school that everyone would say is very mixed in terms of nationality and the background of children. It is in an area that is certainly not that affluent. It has missed out on the scheme or the second time whereas, in the same area, other schools that would seem more advantaged have been accepted into the scheme, although I do not begrudge that. The second school is an island school. One school on the island was in and the other school on the same island was out. This seems unusual. Again, if we knew the matrix in detail at least people would have some understanding of how the Department arrived at its answer.

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