Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Bonjour. When the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance do not remember the 1990 World Cup, you realise you are a total aul' fella and need to get out.

The important point I want to make today, in what is probably the last interaction I will have with the Taoiseach for a while, is on an issue I have raised a number of times in recent years. It is the reason I got involved in politics in the first place. It is about disadvantaged education, DEIS schools and DEIS plus. DEIS plus is a proposal for three areas in Dublin - Tallaght, Ballymun and Dublin 17 - to replicate what has been happening in Dublin 1, which is a multidisciplinary approach to trauma-based supports for the most acutely disadvantaged schools.

When I raise this with the Minister for Education, she always gives me a positive response but she says there is an OECD review in the second quarter of 2024 of the entirety of the DEIS system. That is fine and we have now come through that period. The difference between the job of the Taoiseach and our job is that a Taoiseach who cares passionately about something can really make it happen very quickly. The problem with being a Member of the Opposition is that if we care passionately about something, we have to cajole, lobby, meet, try to amend legislation and try to plead with Ministers. The great thing about the Taoiseach's position is that if he decided that DEIS plus needed to happen, it could happen and we would not need to wait for budgetary decisions or long discussions about it. If he were passionate about it, it could happen.

We are talking about 100 schools. We are speaking about the most profoundly disadvantaged children who are trying to battle through a suite of trauma and intergenerational disadvantage. I know the Taoiseach knows that education is the one chance that children have to break out of poverty. I understand this and the Taoiseach understands this. In the case of the schools identified by the INTO in the three areas, principals have been engaging with the Department. This has been positive and we are almost there. Will the Taoiseach give a commitment? We always ask for the Government to meet the principals but I think we have gone beyond that. I ask for an acknowledgement. We cannot just give one quarter of the schools in the country DEIS status, as we have done, and think it makes a difference to the most profoundly disadvantaged children. When we speak about crime, drugs, inequality in society and all of these issues, fundamentally a huge amount of this comes back to the chances that children have in their classrooms at the early stage. This new scheme would involve 100 schools. It has already worked in Dublin 1. Can we make it happen in the most profoundly disadvantaged schools throughout the country? These are 100 schools and the programme is DEIS plus.

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