Brendan Smith urges DESH inclusion for St. Patrick's, Sherrcock

Thank you very much, I want to thank you for your assistance and support of the staff of the House of the Rockies over the past number of years, and so hopefully all of us who are here in the Chamber at the minute will be back, hopefully. I am delighted the Minister of State, the Department of Education and also the Department of Tourism and Sport, that he is here with us this afternoon, and Minister, I just want to put on the record the first opportunity I had to thank you very sincerely for the great work you have done with the sports capital programme and also with the large-scale infrastructure programme as well, and I am delighted my own county has been a major beneficiary both in the sports capital programme allocations and also last week's announcement with £90 million in funding for the region's sports complex in Cavern, which would be so beneficial to all sporting disciplines and to the wider region as well, so Minister, that work will pay dividends for many generations to come. Minister, as you are fully aware, as all of us in this House have the importance of the DESH programme, and you will recall many debates in our own parliamentary party in regard to the need to expand the programme, and thankfully Minister Norma Foley was in a position to include more schools in the DESH programme, and again, Minister, you would have heard all of us raise particular cases where schools weren't included that all of us would have made particular cases on. And I think far too often in our public administration there is far too much administrative inertia and inaction instead of changing policy as needs change and as society changes as well. Far too often decisions are made on outdated criteria. I am speaking particularly in relation to the request of Scalif Aldrich Nafa in Shercot County Cavern who have put a formal request to the Department again to be included in the DESH programme. The School of Outline in great detail to Minister Foley that their school services community faces significant challenges like many other communities throughout the country. And the school community, the board of management, the principal and her staff, and the parents' association believe that DESH status will greatly enhance their ability to support even better their students and to also support even more effectively the families. Many of the students in Shercot, Minister, as you would know, representing a neighbouring area, they come for backgrounds where English is an additional language which presents unique barriers to their education and success. And additionally, like every other community, a number of families face particular challenges and that is prevalent throughout all communities. Now the school very actively engage with the Education and Welfare Officer, with NEPPS, with the ISPCC, with Garda-Chicana, with Tusla and with CAMS, in the best interest of the pupils. The school seeks and enlists the support of all the bodies that work on a daily basis with our schools. The school is very strongly of opinion that without additional resources and targeted programmes that are available through DESH, their efforts will only go so far. The school community, the teachers, and their support staff, and I know most of them, they work very hard on programmes initiatives to improve attendance to ensure that the pupils attain their best academic achievements possible. But they believe that so much more would be done for so many more pupils if the resources of the DESH programme was available to them. Minister, as I said at the outset, the public index is used to assess the need for DESH status. It does not, I believe, accurately reflect the situation at schools such as St. Patrick's in Sherrcock or the unique challenges that students face in particular communities. The community in Sherrcock experiences high levels of mobility with many families moving in and out as parents seek employment in nearby factories and thankfully there is huge employment in that particular area. This transient nature can lead to underreporting and census data which may not capture the full extent of the needs of students who have recently moved to the area and particularly the additional demand on a student and parents in regard to their lack of proficiency in the English language. At the time when DESH was last reviewed, the pupil's air codes were not even inputted to POD at the time. So, Minister, I believe that the Department should give urgent consideration to the request of Skell Fodrig Nafid to be included under the DESH programme. And all of us in this house could identify other schools, but this particular case that I'm putting forward today is on behalf of St. Patrick's National School, Sherrcock, which I believe in the DITA submission made by the school merits urgent consideration. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to thank you. I appreciate our officials from Cavan G.A., LGFA and Camogie, but also with Cavan County Council at your request. And I'm delighted that the Department of Sport was able to approve really massive funding, I think the third-biggest in the country, the second-biggest in the country. Second, after Daly Met Park. After Daly Met Park. And it's what we want to see. We want to see local authorities, sporting organisations, working together to provide facilities for all of the people. In relation to the topic at hand, the Department of Education provides a wide-range of supports to all schools, DESH and non-DESH, to support the inclusion of all students and address barriers to students achieving their potential. Universal supports are available to all schools to enable them to support students at risk of disadvantage. Minister Foley has secured approximately €170 million in funding to provide free school books as a universal support to all primary and post-primary schools in the free education scheme. Since 2020, the Minister has provided three improvements to the teacher allocation schedule to allow for smaller classes in primary schools. As part of the capitation package in Budget 25, over €30 million was secured as a permanent increase in capitation funding to help schools now and longer term with increased day-to-day running costs. This represents an increase of around 12% on current standard rates and enhanced rates. This increases on top of the circa 9.2% increase from last year. Supplementing those universal supports, the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools programme is a key policy initiative of the Department to address concentrated educational disadvantage at school level in a targeted and equitable way across the primary and post-primary sectors. The DESH programme is targeted at schools with the highest levels of concentrated disadvantage. Schools that were included in the programme in 2022 were those with the highest levels of concentrated disadvantage as identified through the refined DESH identification model. Schools were not required to apply for inclusion in the programme, the model was applied fairly and equally to all schools. The extension of the DESH programme to new schools is just one component of working Minister Foley's vision for an inclusive education system. While the DESH programme supports those schools with the highest levels of concentrated educational disadvantage, Minister Foley recognises there are students at risk of disadvantage in all schools. Minister Foley invited the OECD Education for Inclusive Societies project to review the current policy approach for the allocation of resources to support students at risk of disadvantage in Ireland. The review was published this year and it did find that while Ireland has a comparatively equitable education system, the DESH programme is a key instrument in that, gaps remain. The review finds that Ireland has an education system that consistently outperforms many other OECD countries but also exhibits relative socioeconomic fairness, making it one of the stronger performers globally. It also recognises the positive impact of resources provided universities to schools as well as the additional resources provided to the DESH programme in addressing disadvantage. The review also highlights continued improvements over the past decade in retention and attainment levels between children and young people in DESH and non-DESH schools. It notes that even with these improvements, important differences in outcomes persist between DESH and non-DESH schools and for children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and travellers in Roma. This information and data has also informed the Traveller in Roma Education Strategy published in July. The findings and recommendations of the OECD review will help inform future policy in the area of addressing education disadvantage. Thank you, Minister. Thank you very sincerely for your response. Again, I want to say that the modelling in CAVN in regard to the large-scale infrastructure sports application, CAVN and the Royal School School, CAVN, collaborating together and putting forward a project that brought the entire community together as well. It's extremely important. I think in all walks of life, we could learn more by more collaboration across sectors, across sports, etc. Minister, I very much appreciate what Minister Foley did. I know that schools who speak to the local public representatives, we know the benefits that DESH has brought the extra teaching resources that may be made available at the time, those extra supports for the children. In Sherrcock, we have an excellent community. Thankfully, there is massive employment in that town, catering for a big area. We have a community with a very good football club, great facilities and also an agletic club that is renowned throughout Ireland's agletic community for the quality of its facilities as well. Again, the people have worked very hard to put those facilities in place and ensure the people are accommodated and given the opportunity to participate in their particular sport, in this case, agletics. Minister, that community wants to ensure, as does the leadership in the primary school, that all children are given the best opportunity to achieve, to reach their best education and attainment. We all know how impactive a good primary school education is for the future of children. So, Minister, in this case, where we have huge mobility, where we have so many families whose first language is not English, where those particular additional challenges arise, I think consideration has to be given to the inclusion of such schools in the DESH programme. And again, I would make the point, far too often, we're making decisions based on outdated strategy, because at the time a strategy is put in place, it may be very progressive, very forward-looking, but things are changing much more rapidly in Ireland today than they ever did in the past with our movement of population, with our increase in population and new challenges that weren't there maybe 10 or 12 years ago. So, again, the DESH programme is of great benefit to so many pupils and schools and school communities throughout the country, and its expansion in the future would be an absolutely good day's work. And, Minister, along with your work in the Department of Tourism, Sport and Media, I want to also compliment you on your work in the Department of Education as well as our thoughts. Go raibh māgat. Go raibh māgat. Look, over the coming months, the Department of Education, with other education agencies and partners, and other government departments and agencies, will work out together to develop tangible actions informed by the recommendations set out in the OECD review. This will include consultation with school communities, and St Patrick's National School in Shergall, would be very welcome to participate in that process. These actions will aim to build on the success of the DESH programme, which, as you know, Deputy Smith, is a key achievement of Fianna Fáil and Government, that we've really laid these strong foundations down in terms of the DESH programme. But you're right, the country needs us to move forward and to adapt to the changing and bring forward enhanced policies as well to reflect the changing Ireland that's there. And I fully agree with you. And I've no doubt that if you return to this doll, this will be a top priority of yours as well. It's a big challenge for me. All the other sitting TDs are safe except myself and Kevin Mann. That's certainly the word that you want to get out. Go raibh māgat. Go raibh māgat.