Included in Budget 2026 was the commitment to publish a new Deis Plan before the end of 2025. As part of the plan, a Deis Plus scheme for schools in the most disadvantaged areas of Ireland will be introduced.
A Deis school (Deis stands for Delivering Equality of opportunity In Schools) receives additional funding and support, as well as access to certain programmes.
Our group of primary school principals from West Tallaght, Ballymun and Darndale welcome the announcement of Deis Plus. It reflects our calls for enhanced support for the children and families that attend our schools.
I want to give credit to Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Minister for Education Helen McEntee (now Minister for Education Hildegarde Naughton) for prioritising Deis Plus. I want to thank all of the Department of Education and Youth officials with whom we have worked over the last number of years.
Attention now turns to the supports that will be included as part of Deis Plus. Since budget day, we have got more details on the funding that will be provided. There will be €16 million in 2026, rising to €48 million in 2027, to support the new Deis Plan and Deis Plus.
I am part of a design advisory group which worked pre-budget to inform the development of the Deis Plus scheme. In that group we looked at the challenges that exist for the children, families and schools in our areas and the supports that we believed would make the biggest difference. Those supports relate specifically to the number of children in our schools that have experienced trauma or have additional needs.
Mr Martin is passionate about Deis Plus and supporting children from the most disadvantaged communities in Ireland. It was a part of the Programme for Government. It was included in the manifesto of every major political party before the last election.
The OECD review of Deis in 2024 pointed to the need for increased supports for children from the most disadvantaged communities. The Department of Education and Youth has completed more than two years of consultations with every stakeholder in the education system. The child poverty unit has spoken about Deis Plus being a necessary part of increased intervention in disadvantaged communities. There is consensus. There is a genuine desire to affect change. Deis Plus has been included in Budget 2026 and is going to happen.
What Deis Plus looks like is now a litmus test of the capacity of the Irish State to attempt to deliver any kind change. Deis Plus needs to be creative, imaginative and bold. Deis Plus needs to require the Department of Education, the Department of Health, the Department of Social Protection and the Department of Children to work together. It needs to employ additional teachers, special needs assistants (SNAs), occupational therapists (OTs), speech and language therapists (SLTs) and counsellors to work together on site in schools every day.
In order to be present in a class to learn, a child needs to feel safe and secure. They need predictability in life, a consistent routine and stability. Trauma in their family can rob them of that
If Deis Plus is watered down and half-assed, it will be a humiliating recognition that our State can no longer impact change. If the systems of Government cannot demonstrate the ability to work together meaningfully and efficiently and we end up with a weak, tinkering-at-the-edge, milquetoast intervention, it will be horrifically depressing for everyone within education.
It will be an indication that the State is no longer capable of mobilising to effect change in any part of our country. Our ideas for improving education, housing, infrastructure and health services are pointless because we are incapable of bending the system to our will. There is no one fighting the effective implementation of Deis Plus except a system of red tape and bureaucracy killing the ideas of what could be possible.
Roughly 1,200 of the 3,800 schools in Ireland are designated as Deis schools. These schools receive enhanced resources to support children from disadvantaged families. Some of these resources include a lower pupil-teacher ratio, a home-school liaison teacher and inclusion in the School Completion Programme. The Deis programme was introduced in 2005 and is 20 years old. We now have a better understanding about trauma and neurodivergence and how they affect a child’s ability to learn.
Deis Plus is going to be a new categorisation of potentially about 100 primary and post-primary schools in pockets of Dublin (West Tallaght, Ballymun, Darndale, Cherry Orchard, the North East Inner City), Limerick City and Cork City as being particularly affected by intergenerational poverty and disadvantage. Schools in those areas would be assisted to deliver supports which we now understand would remove barriers to learning.
A survey of primary school principals in West Tallaght, Ballymun and Darndale in early 2024 told us that about 50 per cent of children in their schools had experienced a direct trauma in their life. Substance abuse, physical abuse, homelessness, crime, violence, hunger, poverty or bereavement had impacted their development in early childhood. In order to be present in a class to learn, a child needs to feel safe and secure. They need predictability in life, a consistent routine and stability. Trauma in their family can rob them of that.
Deis Plus should provide schools with additional teachers, SNAs, funding and space within our school buildings to allow them to deliver trauma-informed supports to these children. Where it has been done, there have been improvements in attendance, retention, emotional wellbeing and ultimately numeracy and literacy for children.
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There are a disproportionate number of children and adults living in those areas where schools may be designated as Deis Plus that have an additional need, that are neurodivergent. The link between early childhood trauma and neurodivergence contributes to this too. The survey of West Tallaght, Ballymun and Darndale found somewhere between 50 per cent and 75 per cent of children in every class need intervention from support teachers. That’s 15 of 20 children in a class. All of these children also need intervention from multidisciplinary teams (OTs, SLTs and counsellors). They are not getting it from the Primary Care system and have no capacity to go private. Deis Plus needs to include multidisciplinary teams working on site, every day, with children in schools.
Mr Martin and Ms Naughton, show us that action is possible. Show us that you can demand the Civil Service deliver on something you believe in. Show us that you have the will to compel Government departments to work together efficiently when the entire system is agreed on the necessity for it.
Show us that there is the power in Government, that there is power in the position of Taoiseach, in the position of Minister, and that we are not all beholden to the amorphous, risk-averse, faceless system of red tape which is the final barrier that Deis Plus faces.
- Conor McCarthy is principal of Tallaght Community National School
