Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important issue. I congratulate the Minister of State on her new position and responsibility. It is a very serious and senior position with a lot of responsibility and issues that need very urgent attention and results in a short space of time.

Right across County Kildare, north and south but particularly in north Kildare, there is huge pressure for school places both in regular schools and for children with special needs. This has been going on for quite a long time. For instance, a replacement for St. Raphael's school in Celbridge has been mooted for 20 years. The school was in need of a replacement 20 years ago and things have changed, they have come and gone, Governments have come and gone and so on and so forth. I was told at public meetings by people who were in the know at the time, and we all know those people, that this was imminent. It would be done at any moment and there was no need to worry about it. That was not true, as we now know, because the three school projects which entailed the replacement for St. Raphael's school on the Dublin Road, Celbridge still have not taken place and the children are still looking for places.

Children who have special needs requirements and those who do not are still looking for places. That should not be the case. Some of us went to an awful lot of trouble because we saw what was happening with respect to the population and the needs that emerged. Several Members of the House set out the catchment areas in each case which had be attended to and catered for. If they were attended to in that fashion, there was no difficulty with raising them because they were provided for long in advance. That did not happen, despite the fact that we went to a great deal of trouble. We now have children with special needs being homeschooled in the constituency, as the Minister knows, which is totally unnecessary. In my time in public life, that has never happened before. It should not have happened and must not happen again.

The point is that there are some people who knew that these kinds of crises were a direct consequence of delaying, crosschecking and delaying again. When we put all these things together four or five years ago, we said we had done our bit and all that had to be done from there on was to ensure that the necessary follow-up took place. Sure enough, a new post-primary school in Prosperous catering for everyone was mooted and agreed. I felt at the time that it would have been built two years ago, or certainly last year. We now find out that the project is in the early stages and that a great deal of planning has yet to be done.

After a public meeting in the town a couple of months ago, there was a request for a meeting with the Minister and the planning section. We were not too impressed by the response of the planning section to public representatives. There is a general sort of feeling that public representatives do not count, that they exaggerate and that they are not clued into the realities. We have to deal with the realities on the ground. During the course of the meeting, somebody let it slip that in a place where there was a new school, the catchment area had been changed. We do not know how it has changed and nobody's permission for that was sought.

Children who live beside a school were being sent to one eight or ten miles away. I do not know how that was considered logical. The catchment area for the two schools involved was completely skewed. It was then disclosed that there would have to be a climate element for any new school proposed. We inquired as to what that was and were told that in the case of a new school emerging, an effort had to be made to ensure that the old, obsolete or unfit school, which was nearby, would offer one of the obsolete places in that school before moving on to the new one. The convoluted logic of that takes some beating.

In the course of these meetings, I discovered that there seems to be no urgency at all. Responsibility is tossed onto the Minister, who has to eventually deal with the outcome. A little careful intervention is required at the appropriate time in order to identify, on the basis of the population, the requirements for new schools, places for children in those schools and children who have special needs in existing, new or modern schools. There is no sense in telling children who have special needs that there is an old school that will satisfy their needs. That is not fair and should not be part or parcel of any policy at the present time. There is no need for it.

We need to plan in advance and take population trends into account. There may be no need for schools for those with special needs, but if there is a need, as there is right now, that results from a sharp increase in population in the area which I live. Everybody else here lives in similar areas in the sense that the population is larger than previously. I am not referring to immigrants; rather, I am talking about the increase in the indigenous population. Incidentally, people who put out rumours about people taking our houses and schools and that we would be all right if it were not for them are engaging in dangerous play that will backfire eventually on the Irish people. We have to deal with that when and if the time comes. I will not refer to people who make threats while wearing masks and so on. That is not something that sits well in this country. There are always consequences, wherever that happened all over the world. We should not go there.

In order to concentrate on the issue at hand, it is important that the Minister takes responsibility for making a decision in circumstances where people have not made one and uses her political initiative to cater for the places that have been identified as being insufficiently served, whether that is in the context of a combination of ordinary or special needs places. She needs to identify the requirements and provide for that within the shortest possible timeframe. We will not be able to do that in the next five or six weeks. If we have a plan in place, however, we can then look for funding, whatever it may be at that stage.

There is a need to take a direct interest in catchment areas. At a meeting with the planning section, our delegation was told to double-check and test whether a suitable school place was available in an obsolete school. Parents have been told to bypass the nearest school to them and instead were offered a place in a different school. Catchment areas have been messed around to such an extent that people do not know where their catchment area was, is or should be, even though their parents and grandparents lived and worked in the same area for generations. In those situations, parents have a right to be annoyed by the kind of situation that has developed in Kildare North and several other constituencies.

The blame is laid at the door of the Minister and Government and Opposition politicians. It is not that simple. There needs to be a root-and-branch rearrangement in the assessment area, a determination of where we need to go and what is required. Along with that, dare I mention school transport? That has a role to play in this. There is not much sense in having places far outside the catchment area , while at the same time trying to determine a catchment area that is adjacent or convenient to a population.

It is appropriate and timely that we are having this debate. It would be better if we had it two or three years ago, but we are where we are now. As a result of having had this debate, we should put in place the measures that are necessary to deal with school transport, primary and post primary schools, special needs places in any of those schools and special schools, if so required, to deal with the situation that has arisen as a result of a rapidly increasing population. There is a responsibility on our part to do all we can do in the shortest possible timeframe to meet those needs, in particular those of the children with special needs to whom I and everybody else present has referred.

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