Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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Question 460: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if he will meet his Department's 2007 commitment to provide funding for the DEIS programme at four schools in a parish (details supplied) in County Donegal; if he will acknowledge that the schools received a letter in 2007 guaranteeing that this funding would be provided annually unless there was a change in enrolment levels; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45262/08]

Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)
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The schools to which the Deputy refers are among the schools that were judged by an independent identification process in 2005 not to have a sufficient level of disadvantage among their pupils to warrant their inclusion in DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunities in Schools), the Action Plan for educational inclusion. The next identification process is scheduled to be held at the end of the current DEIS programme which runs from 2005-2010. There will not be an opportunity before this to be included in the current DEIS programme of supports.

The schools referred to retained resources, including financial and a shared Rural Coordinator post, under pre-existing schemes and programmes for addressing educational disadvantage. When DEIS was introduced, a commitment was given as a concessionary measure to these schools that they would retain a level of support for the duration of the DEIS Initiative.

While it is appreciated that the discontinuation of these resources will impact on these schools, given the current volatile and challenging economic climate, difficult decisions had to be made in order to contain public sector spending. One of these decisions was to advance the withdrawal of such supports from non DEIS schools to the beginning of the next school year.

The main focus of Social Inclusion measures will be to retain resources in DEIS schools. There is a need to focus targeted resources on the schools in most need and this approach is in line with the broad thrust of the recommendations of the Comptroller and Auditor General which are set out in his report on Primary Disadvantage of 2006, which recommended that my Department should focus its educational disadvantage measures on those schools serving the most disadvantaged communities.