Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Deputies Troy and Ó Ríordáin referred to divestment. I absolutely appreciate their bona fides in relation to advancing this programme as quickly as possible. I acknowledge that there is a Government commitment to do that and that there has been co-operation from various partners, in the first instance, in respect of the pilot programme. Somewhere along the line it gets lost that 52 of the 53 new primary schools are multidenominational, and 44 of the 50 new post-primary schools are multidenominational. I hear the frustrations of Deputies Troy and Ó Ríordáin, and we have discussed the matter previously. Putting that to one side, significant learning will come from the pilot scheme. There is no doubt that it worked in some areas, but it did not work at all in other areas. That is being reviewed. Out of that there will be an action plan to do things differently and more proactively where we feel it did not work, and also to take the learnings from where it worked well. This is just one step in a longer process. We have the vision and the determination to advance it as quickly as possible.

I do not know how DEIS found its way into this discussion.

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