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

The appeals process is underway at the moment. It will be announced shortly. I am not involved in that. It is independently being assessed. There is an identification model. It has to be done fairly and transparently. For that reason, the appeal process was limited to enrolment data which underpins the model. That is through the primary online database, POD, system and the post-primary online database, P-POD, system. That appeals process does not allow for the submission of contextual information. A rules-based national model has to consider all schools on the same basis. It cannot substitute locally held knowledge for data that are not available or comparable nationwide. Incorporating local level indicators or qualitative submissions where such information is not nationally available could create challenges around consistency, transparency and equality of treatment. The Department is committed to ensuring that all schools are treated equally.
I hear the Deputy's concerns. I will come back to this question. This is the first phase of this DEIS plus programme. We are going to be looking at how this is rolled out from September onwards. I want to make sure - and that is why I set up a pilot as part of this - that certain schools that are not DEIS would access to a home school liaison co-ordinator. I appreciate there are schools that have educational disadvantage. We need to be able to respond to that with the evidence and data.

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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