School Funding
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-15
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Ruth Coppinger (PBP), Dublin West

Obviously, the schools should appeal the decision. Hopefully, they will be brought up to the level of supports needed. There has been a huge problem in this regard. There has been a 500% increase in the number of schools contacting the financial support services unit of the Department because of the rising cost of living. It affects every school. In areas of severe disadvantage, parents do not have the same resources that more middle-class areas have. Are the schools supposed to drop the nurturing and well-being support they are providing because they cannot afford it any longer? I understand the Minister of State is saying they will still get supports from the DEIS scheme.
There is one other matter I wish to follow up. The Minister of State mentioned that there is new enhanced data and a way of analysing same. I am all for a scientific approach but the Minister of State said:
While these challenges are often well understood locally, they are not always captured in data sets that can be fairly and consistently applied across the entire school system. A rules-based national model must rank all schools on the same basis. It cannot substitute locally held knowledge for data that are not available ...
Where do locally held factors that are specific to an area come into it?
We hear about the Westies and about gangland crime over the years in Corduff. It has those historical local problems, and that should be considered. On the same day that the schools got the news they would not be included in DEIS plus, five members of a local organised crime group were sentenced to jail over an attack which the judge involved said bypassed any notion of humanity and which involved beating, burning, stabbing and branding their victim with the word "rat".
Children in these schools are being groomed into crime. They are not able to learn because they come into school having suffered trauma. Those factors have to be taken into account somewhere in the system.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-15