Child Poverty
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-21
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Ruth Coppinger (PBP), Dublin West

The Taoiseach mentioned child poverty. There are a quarter of a million children in forced deprivation, 8% in consistent poverty, and one in five workers is low-paid in an economy that has vast wealth and a budget surplus. The Taoiseach mentioned DEIS plus. In Dublin 15 and much of the constituency I represent, there is huge anger among principals that so many schools have been left off the DEIS plus list. Earlier I raised the two primary schools in Corduff left off DEIS plus even though it is an area where principals have described gangland crime and criminality. I refer also to Blakestown Community School. Not one secondary school in Dublin 15 was included on the list, despite us having the youngest population and huge areas of poverty. All of the orange parts of the map I am holding up are in these areas I am talking about. Blakestown Community School has very disadvantaged status. It has problems with educational attainment, employment issues, criminality and lone parents. A significant number of children live in care or emergency accommodation. There are English language learners, a huge number of pupils of heritage status other than Irish and children with Traveller identity who do not want to identify as Travellers. The school experiences so many of these issues. If we look at the overall population of schoolgoing age, it is absolutely baffling that one primary school, Ladyswell National School in Mulhuddart, and no secondary school made the DEIS plus list. There is a superleague of poverty now that the Government is forcing schools to compete in. All schools should be getting these supports.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-21