DEIS plus is a crucial step to break the cycle of poverty and educational inequality. Several Limerick city schools have been included, which I really welcome, but, unfortunately, six schools have not been and they serve some of the most deprived communities in the State. Those schools are Our Lady of Lourdes, St. John's Girls' and Infant Boys' School, St. John the Baptist Boys' National School, Presentation Primary School, CBS Primary School and St. Michael's Infant School. These schools all form part of the Oscailt network of DEIS schools in Limerick city consisting of all band 1 primary and post-primary schools in the city. There are 12 schools in the Oscailt network. Six were successful with DEIS plus and six were unsuccessful. Research by the Oscailt network in 2025 highlighted the need for multidisciplinary support across all 12 schools and not just the six selected. I will give the Minister examples of some of the statistics from some of the schools that were excluded. St. John the Baptist Boys' National School is an all-boys band 1 school located in Garryowen. It serves a community with complex needs where the majority of the students require interventions from SETs, local unemployment is at 33% and lone parent rates exceed 42%. Third level education in this community is as low as 14.8%. The school was unsuccessful. Similarly, next door, St. John's Girls' and Infant Boys' School serves 220 pupils and is in the John's A electoral district, which is statistically recognised as one of the most deprived areas in the country. A significant proportion of the students come from migrant backgrounds. Third level attainment is also very low. Our Lady of Lourdes has 162 pupils with an early start preschool and two special classes for autism. Most of the school's pupils come from families experiencing long-term intergenerational poverty, and their community is directly impacted by ongoing gangland feuding in the local area. Presentation, CBS and St. Michael's are on the one campus. Some 30% of their students are homeless, including hidden homeless, 20% are in IPAS accommodation, 10% are from a Traveller background and 40% are in DEIS band 1. The principal of CBS primary had to purchase mattresses himself last year as he found 15 people living in a one-bedroom apartment, a fact not picked up by the POD system. The exclusion of these schools reflects not a lack of need but a failure of the system to respond appropriately to that need. The DEIS plus identification model is too rigid. It does not consider the lack of services in areas of high socio-economic deprivation or the crippling and destructive impact for children, families and communities of the many complex issues in these communities. It relies heavily on self-declared census data, and in many of these communities a high proportion of responses to the census return do not state certain details. For example, in Limerick city centre a large cohort of individuals chose not to disclose their ethnic or cultural identity or level of education, and these are two specific areas looked at in the DEIS plus identification model. This tells us that there is a gap in the data. Further gaps exist due to the self-reporting data collected by schools for the POD and P-POD because if the parents do not provide the information on a child's ethnicity, it is not captured by the identification model. We are falling short because the selection process fails to recognise the lived experience of poverty and disadvantage experienced by the children in these schools. In the appeals documentation the Department states that no additional data can be submitted on the appeals process. Therefore, appeals will be considered only on the DEIS plus identification model. We need to find a way to make sure that schools like this are picked up by the DEIS plus identification model.

Sentiment score: -0.17

I thank the Minister for being here today. It is very rare that one gets the actual Minister when one raises a Topical Issue. We have the OSCAILT network in Limerick and 12 schools are identified in that. It is very similar in the north east inner city where we have the North East Inner City initiative that works with ten of the most deprived schools in the inner city and operates on the same principles as OSCAILT. My understanding is that those schools were all identified and included in DEIS plus. I have a couple of follow-on questions. Will the Minister or the Department flag to principals in advance of next year the importance of updating their primary online database, POD, and post-primary online database, P-POD, before the DEIS plus assessment? Principals have a highly intensive work load and in many cases the POD may not have been updated in the fullest sense. Will the Department carry out a review on the roll-out of DEIS plus to look meaningfully at some of the issues I have raised around the rigidity of the application process? There is a school on the left hand side of the road in Limerick that has been included and meets the criteria as set out by the system but there is a school on the right hand side of the road that does not when it essentially serves the same population and has the same issues. One school has now been given a leg up while the other has, unfortunately, been given a kick back.

Sentiment score: 0.04