Deputy Pat the Cope Gallagher has labelled the Government’s handling of the recent DEIS programme as chaotic and shambolic.
His comments come following media reporting that the Department of Education’s designation of some schools was inaccurate due to the data used.
At least one Donegal school was designated as an urban school despite bineg in a rural area.
“This matter has been raised by me on a continual basis with the Minister in the Dáil and I have cautioned the Department that with the absence of a proper appeals mechanism that errors would occur and problems would arise with certain school designations and the failure to designate other schools. This has been a disaster for the Government and it is further testament of the Governments poor approach to rural Ireland.”
He said he has already challenged publically Minister Joe McHugh in the Dáil to come clean over the mess they have created with DEIS but was met wiht silence.
He fumed “So many schools within our county clearly fulfil the DEIS criteria but were not designated by the Minister and that is completely wrong.
“In a recent reply to my Dáil question, to my shock, the Minister agreed that numerous schools meet the criteria but were not designated by the Department – it seems the Department were accepting the principle that there is a two tier DEIS approach – those who are DEIS and fully designated and those who fulfil DEIS criteria but are not designated by the Department and have no supports and extra resources even though they are clearly entitled to them.”
He added that the Government now by their own actions have created even greater inequality within the Education system.
“The only possible solution is that DEIS must be immediately reopened and a further run of DEIS designations be made – based on the principles of fairness and equality to all.
“The new system of designations brought in by this Government has been a disaster from the outset, schools had little or no input, no appeals available to them and the data used by the Department was out of date from the start as the most recent census was not used in the process.
“The recent admission by the Government that there are issues surrounding Eircodes is a red herring and a cover off for a flawed process adopted by the Government.”
The West Donegal TD challenged the Government to immediately fund a further round of DEIS and reopen to it to all schools which currently have not received DEIS designation saying nothing short of a new DEIS programme will restore confidence in this scheme.
“The Government should have moved to solve these crises with DEIS status sooner, it has been clear from the day of the initial announcement that there were serious issues and problems with this new Government initiative on DEIS. The Government must now take immediate action and correct the inequality they have created by their own incompetence on this matter – no school should be disadvantaged as a result of poor political decision making and we have multiple examples of schools within our communities which have been disadvantaged because of this flawed process,” concluded Pat the Cope.
