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

I thank the Minister for the reply, but to certain extent it reminded me of Tim Figgerty from long ago, although the Minister is probably too young to have ever heard of him. He was a mythical figure who used to get the figs into the Fig Rolls. He went missing and the story that a certain biscuit manufacturer had was that nobody would ever find out how to get the figs into the Fig Rolls and that they were in serious trouble. I still have not found out how to get the figs into Fig Rolls.

The Minister told me there is a weighted process. I asked specifically about the actual algorithms and weightings. Is it that there are, say, ten marks for certain Eircode postcodes and the small area statistics, 20 marks for Traveller pupils, five marks for Roma pupils or what is it? What are all the weightings and figures and how is the calculation carried out? It is only fair, in the interests of transparency, that the Department would give detail of the mathematical formula it used in order that people making appeals will know how they failed to get into the scheme and what information carries the most weight. As I said, a school might find out, for example, that it had understated the number of Roma or Traveller students. The Department has, obviously, used nationality in regard to people's mother tongue and so on. Will the Minister publish the mathematical formula, or the algorithm as it is now called? Will she give a breakdown of the assessment for each school, showing exactly how the Department arrived at the conclusion for each school that failed to get in?

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