John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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456. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if a further review will take place of the level of disadvantage within schools towards establishing whether more schools meet the requirements for entry into the current DEIS programme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [65005/25]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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The DEIS programme is a key policy of Government to tackle concentrated educational disadvantage at school level. It provides a targeted range of supports and is additional to the universal supports provided to all schools, such as free schoolbooks and free hot school meals. Schools also have access other universal supports such as wellbeing supports for students through the National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS), additional teaching hours under the English as an Additional Language (EAL) scheme and advisory support from the Department’s Inspectorate.

Currently, the DEIS programme supports almost 1,200 primary and post-primary schools, reaching approximately 260,000 students, with an annual investment of over €180 million. Budget 2026 allocates an additional €16 million in 2026, rising to €48 million in 2027, to support the implementation of the new DEIS Strategy and introduce the DEIS Plus scheme, which will commence in 2026.

The new DEIS Strategy will include a focus on developing more innovative approaches to addressing educational disadvantage in all schools - DEIS and non-DEIS - and working towards a more flexible system of support to ensure that schools can receive the right support at the right time. This will involve a more dynamic resource allocation model where levels of resources more accurately follow the levels of need identified by objective data.

The details of the DEIS Strategy are being finalised and will be published before the end of the year. Any future expansion of the programme, and allocation of overall resources, will be considered within the context of the new DEIS Strategy and the availability of resources.