Is léir dom gur scoil iontach í Gaelscoil Pheig Sayers. Tá sárobair ar siúl sa scoil lá i ndiaidh lae. This is a good news story today. It is positive progress, as Deputy Gould has articulated. A growth from 89 pupils initially to almost 300 now speaks volumes. This is an ambitious project for the school, in that it is a 16-classroom project with two classrooms for pupils with special educational needs. It is a series of processes but, as I have articulated, the tender process to appoint a project manager will be c…

Ensuring all students and staff, including LGBTQI+ students and staff, feel supported, welcomed and secure within their schools is a key priority for the Department of Education. The Department of Education supports a number of programmes that support LGBTQI+ students and staff. For example, since 2013, the Department has provided funding to BeLonG To for StandUp! Awareness which is a campaign that supports school communities to take a stand against bullying that is homophobic, transphobic or biphobic. The Deputy o…

It is an absolute priority that students, staff and everyone in the school community are safe, happy and secure in the environment in which they work and attend school every day. Employment law is important, as I said earlier and the Deputy acknowledged. That is an important point. It means that employers, including schools, have a duty to ensure the health and safety of their employees in the workplace. The Department offers an employee assistance service for all school staff, including LGBTQI+ employees. This fre…

I thank the Deputies, who have raised a variety of points. Deputy Gannon mentioned the fact that if you cannot see it, you cannot be it. I am hugely supportive of achieving the greatest diversity possible within our schools for the benefit of our school communities, our students and our staff. I recently attended the graduation in Marino of migrant teachers. It has been a phenomenally successful programme through which we are getting the best of experience and diversity to enrich our schools. I intend to support an…

School transport is a significant operation managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of the Department of Education. In the current school year more than 121,400 children, including in excess of 15,500 children with special educational needs, are transported every day to primary and post-primary schools throughout the country at a cost of more than €289 million in 2021. Under the terms of the school transport schemes, children are eligible for transport at primary level where they reside not less than 3.2 km from and are a…

I say to the Deputy that facts are facts and they remain as facts, irrespective of the timeframe. Significant progress has been made. The Deputy will be aware, for example, that last year as an interim measure, eligibility criteria were adjusted. Rather than eligibility revolving around the nearest school, I put in place measures so that students would be facilitated if they were opting to go to their second-nearest school. This has alleviated quite considerably many of the difficulties that heretofore had been exp…

I appreciate the interest across the floor from all Deputies in the whole school transport system. It is an issue I am very familiar with, given my constituency. There has been a body of work. I am glad there is an acknowledgement that the improvements made in the interim, and particularly around the second-nearest school, have considerably helped with access. I was asked a direct question about the measures for the 2022-23 school year. They will be announced imminently. The work of the review group is continuing a…

I acknowledge first of all the great work that our schools, students, school leaders and staff have done in welcoming Ukrainian children and young people into their communities over the past two months, and the wider society also. I have visited many schools across the length and breadth of the country and I have seen at first hand the professionalism, the care, the welcome and the efforts that have been made to provide a happy and inclusive atmosphere for Ukrainian families. The Department is working to support ed…

I appreciate the shortage of time but I will say there is no cap on the resources that are being made available to our schools. We have ensured that where schools requested additional teaching staff, which could have been teaching staff for additional hours or English as an additional language, or whether they requested furniture or whatever, that has all been put in place. Specifically, in relation to the students-----

We have put in place REALT teams, which are addressing any needs on the ground, either for schools with whatever issues they might have or indeed if there is an inability to access a place from a student's point of view. It has proven very successful, which I want to acknowledge. These locally based regional teams are aware of the issues within schools. They are open to the principals but also to the families to address any of the needs that need to be met for the students. I acknowledge that schools have done trem…

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter, which gives me the opportunity to set out for the House the position of second level schools in Killester, Raheny and Clontarf. To plan for school provision and analyse the relevant demographic data, the Department of Education divides the country into 314 school planning areas, as the Deputy knows, and uses a geographical information system, using data from a range of sources, including child benefit and school enrolment data, to identify where the pressure for school pl…

I appreciate we are over time. I thank the Deputy. I would like to clarify that the demographics at post-primary level in the Raheny, Clontarf and Killester school planning area are expected to peak in 2028, with a gradual decline out to 2040. The 2020 enrolment is 3,789 across seven schools, with an expected peak in enrolment at 4,087 in 2028. It is important to note that the patronage process is run after it has been decided that a new school is warranted or required. The patronage process is open to all patron b…

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. I want to assure the House and the Deputy that meeting the educational needs of children coming to Ireland from the Ukraine is a priority for this Government. I acknowledge the terrific work that is being done on the ground in terms of meeting the needs and the challenges. I have had the opportunity to visit a number of schools throughout the country. I visited Trinity Comprehensive School, Ballymun recently. The welcome, inclusion and effort that is being put in…

I want to be clear that the school building programme continues apace. It is to the credit of all involved that even during lockdown, we managed to continue to do the work that needed to be done. There is no question of the school building programme not progressing as it should, and rightly so. The primary issue raised by the Deputy related to accommodation being made for Ukrainian students. I reiterate to the House the commitment of the Government to welcoming people fleeing the war in Ukraine and seeking protecti…

I thank the Deputy. DEIS is the main policy initiative of my Department to tackle educational disadvantage at school level. Schools in the programme avail of a range of targeted supports aimed at tackling educational disadvantage, including additional classroom teaching posts, home-school community liaison co-ordinator posts, DEIS grant funding and access to the school completion programme. On 9 March, I was pleased to announce the expansion of the DEIS programme. This will see the programme extended to an addition…

The Department of Education has engaged significantly with the school management bodies and unions to outline the development of the DEIS identification model. In the coming days, further information will be made available on the Department’s website relating to the development and implementation of the DEIS identification model. This will provide a clear outline to schools on how the information provided by them on the student enrolment database was used in conjunction with the HP deprivation index data to identif…

I was very pleased yesterday to be able to announce a major expansion of the DEIS programme. For the first time, we are now seeing a considerable expansion of the programme, which will mean that a significant number of schools will benefit from the €32 million investment. In fact, it will mean that 310 schools will be provided for in the DEIS programme, which will mean that 25% of our schools are part of the programme, facilitating almost 250,000 or one in four students. Currently, 884 schools and more than 180,000…

I want to finish on the appeals process. I acknowledge that many schools were very pleased yesterday. The Deputy was gracious enough to include a reference to the schools in his constituency. I also appreciate there were schools that did not make the DEIS status yesterday. I want to be very clear that the model employed, that is, the Pobal HP deprivation index, is very clear and transparent in respect of categorising what we are talking about or referring to in terms of compounded disadvantage, which highlights tho…

I thank the Deputy. I want to be very clear at the outset that the consultation actually predated me. There has been and, even in my own term, there continues to be engagement with the partners in education and the stakeholders of education.

I am not finished yet. I gave an absolute commitment to the Deputy that he would be fully briefed in advance of me making any public announcement in relation to DEIS. That was facilitated yesterday. It was facilitated by experts and by officials from my own Department. Indeed, I was there also. On the availability of information, every step of the way the information has been made available through parliamentary questions, etc. about the model and the work that was ongoing at that time. In fairness, we have benefit…