Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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573. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills when she will launch the consultation on the Traveller Education Strategy; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [54788/22]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I am committed to ensuring that actions to improve educational outcomes for Travellers are advanced in line with relevant Programme for Government commitments, including the commitment to develop a National Traveller Education Strategy.

Officials from my Department, together with officials from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, engage with Traveller representative organisations as part of the National Traveller and Roma Inclusion Strategy (NTRIS) education subcommittee. This engagement will continue in the context of the development of the Traveller Education Strategy.

A range of actions to improve Traveller education outcomes are currently under way, and this will also inform Traveller education policy:

- A pilot project, Supporting Traveller and Roma (STAR), which is underway in four areas with the aim of improving attendance, participation and school completion. An independent assessment of the project is due to commence this year;

- Work by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) to support teaching and learning of Traveller history and culture, which follows the 2019 audit of the curriculum in respect of Traveller culture and history. A full-time Education Officer has been employed in the NCCA to advance this work;

- Creation of a new post in the Professional Development Service for Teachers, with a dual role in overseeing, developing and supporting CPD in diversity/social inclusion and in DEIS, for which the recruitment is nearing final stages;

- The extension of DEIS status to an additional 322 schools I announced in March of this year, based on the refined DEIS identification model which includes components to reflect the educational disadvantage experienced by students who have self-identified as Traveller or Roma;

- Last month I announced details of the 2022 Dormant Accounts Funding to provide targeted supports to tackle education disadvantage for Traveller and Roma students. My Department received €400,000to support attendance, participation and retention among Traveller and Roma learners. This additional funding will be used to allocate 10 new home-school community liaison (HSCL) coordinator posts in 14 non-DEIS post-primary schools.