Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 4 May 2017
264. Deputy Thomas Byrne asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the details of school non-attendance data for each electoral division in Dublin or the smallest administrative division available in each of the years 2010 to 2016 in tabular form. [21172/17]
View answerThe Educational Welfare Service of Tusla has advised that it does not hold the school attendance data in a format which enables Tusla to readily provide information for electoral divisions thus providing the level of detail requested for the years 2010 to 2016. Furthermore Tusla advises it would be exceedingly time-consuming to provide the information required as it would involve a manual trawl of the attendance returns for all schools in Dublin for each of the six years to allocate the schools in Dublin to their correct electoral division and then calculate the data related to each school and electoral division and provide averages. Were staff time to be allocated to this task it would significantly impinge on the day to day delivery of services.
The Educational Welfare Service of Tusla has advised that data at county level is available on the Tusla website in the Annual Attendance Reports prepared by the Education Research Centre. This information can be located at the following web address www.tusla.ie/services/educational-welfare-services/publications/research-and-statistics.
