Educational Disadvantage
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-16
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Hildegarde Naughton (FG), Galway West

The identification model has to be applied consistently right across the country to have fairness and transparency around it. Under the DEIS strategy to 2035, work is under way in my Department, with colleagues in the Central Statistics Office and across other Departments, to utilise other administrative data sources to help improve how we can resource schools in a targeted way to support children and young people at risk of disadvantage.
The appeals process allows schools to correct any inaccuracies in enrolment data or to seek verification that the DEIS plus identification model had been correctly applied. It was limited to the enrolment data. If there is other information that might be relevant to that particular locality, they could not take that on board because it would not have been consistently applied right across the country. We need to make sure that we have a sense of fairness.
I hear concerns, and not just in relation to that particular school. We all know there is educational disadvantage right across the country. My Department is working with the CSO to look at even better ways to capture this data. I would love to be in a position to maybe not call a school a DEIS school but to be able to apply the supports as needed and as intensively as required right across the country.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:17+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-16