Revisions

Updated on Nov 22, 2023. See Revisions note here.

DIS Coverage

In 2020/21, there were a total of 245,663 students. As socio-economic profiling is only available for Irish addresses, only Irish-domiciled students are included in this analysis.

Of these students, 220,280 are Irish-domiciled. A DIS was assigned to 97% of these addresses, leaving 3% of students without a DIS, and thus, excluded from this analysis. There are myriad reasons why a DIS may not be assigned. One example would be missing or incomplete address data.

DIS Scale

The Deprivation Index Score ranges from approximately -40 (extremely disadvantaged) to +40 (extremely affluent). The thresholds for each of the four DIS categories are outlined in 1. Introduction.

Provision of Home Addresses

Socio-economic profiling is intended for the student’s original home address. For example, if a student’s home address is Letterkenny, but they reside in Dublin during the term-time, the returned home address should be in Letterkenny.

Home addresses are provided by the student to each of the HEIs upon registration. The onus is on each institute to ensure students are made aware of this, and that an accurate home address is provided for each and every student registered at their institute.

For any queries or further information, please contact the Statistics Unit, at statistics@hea.ie