Educational Disadvantage
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-26
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Niall Collins (FF), Limerick County

I thank Deputy Moynihan for raising this important issue. Addressing educational disadvantage is a key priority for the Government, for me and, obviously, for the Minister for Education and Youth. The DEIS programme is a key policy initiative for addressing concentrated educational disadvantage at school level. DEIS supplements universal supports by targeting additional resources to schools where disadvantage is most concentrated, helping to promote equity and meet the needs of children and young people.
Currently, the DEIS programme supports almost 1,200 primary and post-primary schools and reaches approximately 260,000 students with an annual investment of more than €180 million. Budget 2026 allocated an additional €16.5 million in 2026, rising to €48 million in 2027, to support the implementation of a new DEIS strategy and introduce the DEIS plus scheme, which will commence this year. Schools which were included in the expansion of the programme in 2022 were those with the highest levels of concentration of children and young people at risk of educational disadvantage, as identified through the refined DEIS identification model. Schools were not required to apply for inclusion in the DEIS programme.
The model was applied fairly and equally to all schools, including those in the DEIS programme already, to ensure they were in the band which best addressed their level of disadvantage. The Minister, Deputy Naughton, is committed to addressing educational disadvantage in all schools to ensure all children can reach their potential. To this end, a new ten-year DEIS strategy to 2035 will be published in the coming weeks. The new strategy will introduce innovative solutions to address educational disadvantage and continue to address the gap between DEIS and non-DEIS schools. Over its lifetime, the new DEIS strategy will focus on improving the opportunities and achievement levels of children and young people at risk of educational disadvantage, developing more innovative approaches to tackling educational disadvantage, and working towards a more flexible system of supports to ensure that a school can receive the right support at the right time. Any future changes to the identification model and overall allocation of resources will be considered within the context of the new ten-year DEIS strategy.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-26