Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle and the staff of the Houses of the Oireachtas for their assistance and support in recent years. I hope all the Deputies present will be back.

I am delighted the Minister of State at the Departments of Education and tourism and sport, Deputy Thomas Byrne, is with us. As this is the first opportunity I have had, I express my sincere thanks to him for the great work he has done with the sports capital programme and large-scale infrastructure programme. I am delighted that my county has been a major beneficiary of the sports capital programme allocations and also benefited from last week's announcement of €90 million in funding for the regional sports complex in Cavan. The complex will benefit all sporting disciplines and the wider region. That work will pay dividends for many generations to come.

The Minister of State will be fully aware, as are all Members of House, of the importance of the DEIS programme. He will recall many debates in our parliamentary party on the need to expand the programme. Thankfully, the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, was in a position to include more schools in the DEIS programme.

The Minister of State has heard all of us raise cases where schools were not included. Far too often in our public administration, there is too much administrative inertia and inaction instead of changing policy as needs and society change. Far too often, decisions are made on outdated criteria. I am speaking particularly in respect of the request by those running Scoil Phádraig Naofa in Shercock, County Cavan. They have formally requested the Department again to be included in the DEIS programme. The school authorities have outlined in great detail to the Minister, Deputy Foley, that the school serves a community that faces significant challenges like many other communities throughout the country. The school community, the board of management, the principal and her staff and the parents' association believe that DEIS status would greatly enhance their ability to support even better their students and families. Many of the students in Shercock, as the Minister of State will know representing a neighbouring area, come from backgrounds where English is an additional language. This presents unique barriers to their educational success. Additionally, like every other community, a number of families face particular challenges. The school very actively engages with the education and welfare officer, NEPS, the ISPCC, An Garda Síochána, Tusla and CAMHS in the best interest of the pupils. The school seeks and enlists the support of all the bodies that work on a daily basis with our schools. The school is very strongly of the opinion that without the additional resources and targeted programmes that are available through DEIS, their efforts will only go so far. The school community, the teachers and their support staff, most of whom I know, work very hard on programmes and initiatives to improve attendance and ensure that the pupils attain their best academic achievements possible. They believe that so much more would be done for so many more pupils if the resources of the DEIS programme were available to them.

As I said at the outset, the Pobal index is used to assess the need for delivering equality of opportunity in schools, DEIS, status. It does not accurately reflect the situation at schools such as St. Patrick's in Shercock or the unique challenges students face in particular communities. The community in Shercock experiences high levels of mobility, with many families moving in and out as parents seek employment in nearby factories. Thankfully, there is huge employment in that particular area. This transient nature can lead to under-reporting in census data that may not capture the full extent of the needs of students who have recently moved to the area, particularly the additional demand on a student and parents in regard to their lack of proficiency in the English language. When DEIS was last reviewed, the pupils' eircodes were not even inputted to the primary online database at the time. The Department should give urgent consideration to the request of Scoil Phádraig Naofa to be included in the DEIS programme. All of us in this House could identify other schools but this particular case I am putting forward today is on behalf of St. Patrick's national school, Shercock which merits urgent consideration as per the detailed submission made by the school.

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