Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy. Tackling educational disadvantage and, in particular, supporting students to fulfil or achieve their full potential in life is a key priority for me. The DEIS programme is a key policy of Government to tackle concentrated educational disadvantage at school level and it is important to acknowledge the success it has been over recent years. More than €180 million is provided annually to additional supports for almost 1,200 schools in the DEIS programme. Budget 2026 allocates an additional €16 million this year on top of that which will translate into €48 million in additional money for the next full year to support the implementation of a new DEIS strategy but also to introduce the new DEIS plus scheme which will start next year.

As Minister, I am determined to close the performance gap between DEIS and non-DEIS schools and to introduce more innovative solutions to tackle educational disadvantage while at the same time making sure we invest more in what is working well because there is a huge amount that is working well. Part of delivering this objective will be the introduction of the new DEIS plus scheme. This scheme will provide additional resources to schools with the very highest level of need. To inform the development of the DEIS plus scheme, I have established a design advisory group. On that group, we have quite a number of different people, including principals, home school community liaison teams, school completion programme co-ordinators - people who work with students day in, day out and understand and know the need that is there - individuals from my Department and teams working with young people from across areas where there is high intergenerational disadvantage. We are also intensifying our engagement with other Government Departments and agencies, whether education partners or stakeholders across the education sector to develop the DEIS plus scheme.

What I said was that I wanted to have both the new DEIS scheme with DEIS plus published by the end of the year. We are still on track for that. What we are doing at the moment is essentially looking at what the different measures that have been identified are, where the greatest level of need is, what we could introduce in the earlier stages and how can we grow on that. Obviously €16 million is not going to provide us with the full DEIS plus scheme we will inevitably end up with. However, we will start to introduce certain elements of that scheme next year and build on it. What we are working on at the moment is identifying what will provide the greatest level of support at the earliest stages possible and on how we can build on that and develop the best scheme possible.

See this speech in context