Aspirations to combat educational inequality and disadvantage in Ireland feature strongly in policy documents of recent decades. Teachers and their concerns are not always to the forefront in such publications or, indeed, in associated research. For this study, 20 teachers and school principals who work in schools located in communities with limited levels of economic, cultural and social capital were interviewed. The interviews were open-ended, allowing participants to articulate freely their thoughts and feelings about their work. Transcript analysis led to the identification of eight key themes: context; tensions and contradictions; attendance; the ugliness of poverty; lack of continuity; parents' expectations; teachers' expectations; school leadership. Furthermore, we propose that "relationships" is a crucially persistent thread linking the eight themes. We conclude that these themes offer a promising framework for schools to evaluate their practices and to structure a programme of staff development and to their understandings of educational disadvantage.