Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the response of the Minister of State. Elections are democratic exercises where we get to press “refresh” on the policy approach taken by different Departments. There is an opportunity, as we head into the coming months, to get unanimity across parties on this point and bring people together so that, no matter who is sitting on the other side of the table negotiating a programme for Government, DEIS+ is a common point of agreement across all of those parties. If that were to happen, I believe the Department officials could be instructed and would deliver in the same way they have delivered on DEIS.

The most important part of this scheme is the multidisciplinary teams. We know that children with additional needs are struggling to get places, treatments and therapies. The Tánaiste said yesterday that he believes the best place to do that is not in the health setting but in the education setting, and I agree with him. In fact, there is great commonality between the position of starting with special schools and progressing on to DEIS schools and the idea of having multidisciplinary teams where therapies can be provided to children with additional needs, including trauma. If that were to happen and we took that step of putting those teams into special schools first, then the DEIS schools should be the next places available as part of a DEIS+ package.

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