Educational Disadvantage Dail Éireann — 2026-01-14 ============================================================ Jerry Buttimer (FG), Cork South-Central The Minister, Deputy Naughton, sends her apologies. For my part, I was a teacher for 17 years. I fully concur with many of the comments the Deputy has made. She is right that the importance of this issue is such that it requires a rigorous and methodical approach and evaluation by everybody. I have always been of the same view as the Deputy that it is about following the student. She is right about that and I agree with her. I thank her for raising this very important issue. Educational disadvantage is a key priority for the Minister and the wider Government. The DEIS programme is a key policy initiative for addressing concentrated disadvantage at school level. Where I disagree with the Deputy is that I think it has worked quite well. The Deputy is right that it is not a panacea for everything but it has worked quite well. When schools did not attain DEIS status, they were completely discommoded. There was a disconnect. That was a mistake. Supplementing universal supports, the DEIS programme provides a fair and targeted way to address concentrated educational disadvantage that promotes equity and meets the needs of children and young people. The DEIS programme currently supports almost 1,200 primary and post-primary schools, reaching approximately 260,000 students with an annual investment of €180 million. This year's budget allocates an additional €16.5 million, which will rise to €48 million in next year's budget, to support the implementation of a new DEIS strategy and introduce the DEIS plus scheme, which will commence this year. The new DEIS strategy, which will include the DEIS plus scheme, will be published in the first quarter of this year. At its core, this strategy will focus on improving the opportunities and achievement levels of children at risk of educational disadvantage, developing more innovative approaches to tackling education disadvantage and working towards a more flexible system of supports to ensure that a school can receive the right support at the right time. The Minister is committed to narrowing the performance gap between DEIS and non-DEIS schools and introducing innovative solutions to address disadvantage. Recent research, including the OECD review of resourcing schools to address educational disadvantage in Ireland, has highlighted the role of the DEIS programme in providing an education system that consistently outperforms many other OECD countries but also exhibits relative socioeconomic fairness, making it one of the stronger performers globally. However, this research has also highlighted that important differences in outcomes persist for students who experience very high levels of deprivation. That is why it is important to note that the Government is committed to introducing a DEIS plus scheme to provide additional supports to schools with the highest levels of students at most risk of educational disadvantage. I hope this will take on board the Deputy's point about following the student. It will also be a model that tackles disadvantage. At its core, it must be able to be assessed in the right way. As a teacher of many years, I agree with the Deputy on that. She made reference to the intergenerational piece. The new DEIS programme will target a cohort of schools with high concentrations of children and young people experiencing that intergenerational disadvantage, where there is a significant gap in outcomes and there are barriers to those children and young people achieving their potential. I see this in my own Department, where we invest millions of euro every year. We really need to have a serious conversation about that intergenerational piece. A DEIS plus design advisory group was established by the Department to inform the development of the DEIS plus scheme. This group includes principals, home school community liaisons and school completion programme co-ordinators who work directly with children and young people experiencing high intergenerational disadvantage. In 2024 and 2025, the Department carried out consultation workshops. The work is focused on informing key policy development. I look forward to working with the Deputy on the matter. I will bring her remarks back to the Minister. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-14/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-14