Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It would be remiss of me not to mention the Maurice McCabe controversy. I welcome the cross-party consensus in regard to the establishment of a public tribunal of inquiry but I also look forward to hearing the Ministers' clarifications in respect of certain questions in the Lower House. I look forward to listening to them answer those questions later today.

I wish to raise two items on the Order of Business. The Minister supplied Members with a list of schools across the country with DEIS status. The Leader of the House will know that this is a bugbear of mine. This will be the sixth time I have raised the issue of the Assumption girls' national school, Walkinstown, in the House. There is a boys' national school, a girls' national school and a girls' secondary schools in the area. These schools are on an island in a sea of DEIS schools that do not have DEIS status.

The Assumption girls' school in Walkinstown is in an area of very high disadvantage. We hear of difficulties in the inner city with drug and crime gangs in the Crumlin area. The children attending this school come specifically from the area of Drimnagh and Crumlin. What is most shocking is that when the boys and girls attending the Assumption junior school proceed to secondary school, the boys go on to Drimnagh Castle secondary school which has been given DEIS status and the girls go on to the Assumption secondary school in Walkinstown, which has not been given DEIS status. This is an anomaly, which discriminates between boys and girls. The boys in Drimnagh Castle are getting a better education than the girls attending the Assumption secondary school. This issue must be examined.It is outrageous that this school, whose case I have raised six times, has not been given DEIS status in the recent allocation. Will the Leader ask the Minister for Education and Skills how on earth his Department is coming up with the criteria to allocate DEIS status? It says it has access to PPS numbers and knows whether parents are in receipt of social welfare allowances and that schools are asked to submit second, fourth and sixth class results. The Department is saying that if a school is doing well, and the teachers are busting their asses to get good results for their kids - excuse me; my apologies.