Picture four women in their forties in a suburban garden in Dublin three years ago. They are celebrating that all four have become primary school principals over the previous twelve months. The schools are under different patronages in places ranging from disadvantaged to comfortable middle-class areas.
Three years later, only one of the four is still a principal. The others have been forced from jobs they wanted and loved by the sheer pressures of the role.
Chronic intergenerational poverty blights the remaining principal’s community. She is nearly broken from managing a Deis school over which a deficit hangs like a curse.
This anecdotal evidence of school leaders’ unsustainable burdens is backed up by research by Deakin University, Melbourne, for the Irish Primary Principals Network. Conducted from 2022 to 2024, it found that for primary school leaders, burnout, stress, sleep disorders and depressive symptoms are either nearly double or more than double those of the healthy working population.
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Minister for Education Helen McEntee has committed to publishing a Deis Action Plan in 2025, including a Deis+ scheme with enhanced funding for the students most in need. While this news is very welcome, it will do little to clear debts where the community cannot fundraise due to deprivation. Nor does it acknowledge a funding crisis right across Irish primary education.
In 2024, the Catholic Primary School Managers’ Association (which represents 85 per cent of primary schools) published research showing that 70 per cent of schools ran at a deficit at some point in the previous year and had to dip into scarce cash reserves just to keep the school afloat.
While the situation is worse where schools cannot fundraise, it is crazy that they have to rely on bake sales, raffles and discos to survive. Imagine if nurses had to fundraise to keep wards open, or social workers had to shake cans to provide basic services? Why do we accept it as normal that schools must do this?
Schools are one of the few institutions in this country that people still not only trust, but love. Senator Lynn Ruane recently spoke movingly in the Seanad about the primary school she attended in Killinarden, Tallaght. She described how it caters to three generations, how the special needs assistants are local women, and how much it means that everyone is minding and looking out for each other. She said, “Our community experiences a lot of hardship and the school is the most consistent place that we will experience throughout our day.”
Eoghan Kenny, a Labour Party TD, outlined some of the challenges faced by schools in Cork, which he described as being at a financial breaking point. They included asking the students to wear coats because they could not afford to turn on heating, while another school used a grant for maths equipment to pay for heating and lighting.
Most worryingly, he said the financial support services unit (FSSU) told a school to take money from their hot meals account to pay their bills.
In recent times, Taoiseach Michéal Martin, Helen McEntee and Minister for State Marian Harkin have all spoken about the need for schools to engage with FSSU as a solution to their financial difficulties.
What none of them mentioned is that FSSU, a small, hardworking and helpful unit, has absolutely no mandate or budget to give any additional funding whatsoever. They can only examine the school’s finances and give advice. Given that principals in schools in deficit will have investigated every possible way to save money, all the FSSU can then do is give an advance on the capitation grant.
This perpetuates the problem. Next year’s grant is being drawn down to pay for this year’s costs. Not even the slightest dent will be made in the underlying deficit.
This is illustrated by the principal of Holy Spirit Junior Primary School in Greenhills, who was quoted by Paul Murphy, People Before Profit–Solidarity TD.
The principal said: “We have approximately €8,000 in the bank ... to pay €10,000 worth of utility bills, a caretaker, a bus escort and cleaner wages, buy resources for students, employ a plumber for a terrible smell on a corridor, not to mention all the other general maintenance costs including in the upkeep of our school building and grounds.”
No advance on a capitation grant will deal with chronic underfunding issues. Some schools are coping by gambling that no utility company will cut off a school. They have cancelled their direct debits for electricity and gas, and pay a few hundred euros when they can.
The Government will point to significant additional investment in schools, including an increase in the basic capitation grant from €200 to €224 – that is, from €1.09 per pupil to €1.22 per school day. It is nowhere near enough.
Schools need their debts cleared, their ageing, creaking school buildings repaired or replaced, and a basic capitation grant of €400. Deis and Deis+ schools need even more. Otherwise, we risk wrecking not just the health and morale of school leaders but one of the best-loved and highest-functioning institutions in this country.
