Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I echo both my colleagues in respect of this issue about which we met with principals last week. I have said this before but previously I worked in school completion in the Coolock area and was based in Darndale. I spent 16 years in that area working with young people in school completion encouraging, promoting and supporting young people to stay in school longer. When you are working with young people for the length of time you are working with them, you see there are huge needs in different areas and different schools. Each school has its own culture but they also have their own challenges and difficulties. The principals brought up something which is incredibly important when we talk about equality. I will provide a definition. Equality means each individual or group is given the same resources or opportunities. Equity recognises that each person has different circumstances, and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome. That is where we need to be when we are talking about equality or equity. We need to get to that stage where there is equity. Unfortunately, at this stage, there are demands on those schools. We are talking about a very small number of schools so we are talking about a relatively small amount of money for those particular schools. However, it will make a massive difference to those communities. The effect will not just be felt in those schools where children will be able to learn, have the capacity and space to be dealing with trauma and all of the educational issues and disadvantages they have, but that ripple effect will spread out into the community as well. We will be talking about reducing anti-social behaviour and reducing that sort of environment they are living in at the moment. Something like this DEIS+ is so important. We recognised many years ago that there were specific schools that needed those extra supports. Even though DEIS has quite rightly been rolled out to far more schools than the original cohort, what we are talking about is that this original cohort and some of those schools in the most disadvantaged areas in the country need that extra support. They really need it quickly.

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