Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I was not here for the presentation. I may have a different view than others on the nature of schools, in that we have too many of them. There are 4,000 schools this country, which has a population similar to that of Manchester. At primary level, there are junior schools, senior schools, girls schools, boys schools, Catholic schools, schools of every other religion you can think of, Gaelscoils and Educate Together schools. It is the responsibility of the Department of Education to house all of these schools. Throughout my political lifetime, I have been trying to deal with schools seeking improvements. The Department is trying to improve as it goes. Some of the schools I deal with need major revamps. They do not have basic sanitation available in certain rooms. Even infants have to go down the corridor to a toilet.

We are all familiar with the conversation about prefabricated buildings and so on. I do not expect a comment on this, but I do want to put it on record. On the broader scale, we need to have a helicopter view of our school system and we need to think about it differently. It is frustrating that there are four different primary schools in a particular geographical area - a junior girls, a junior boys, a senior boys and a senior girls - that are all seeking approval for building projects. They are all close to each other, but all completely independent. They have separate principals and boards of management. That certainly impacts on the kind of resources that can be provided.

What kind of inspection routine does the Department have? Does it proactively go to schools to carry out fire audits and see what kinds of improvements are needed? Is the Department always depending on boards of management to contact it? I feel the patronage model is letting the school system down. Just as with Covid, what happens is that the Department provides a sum of money and expects to schools to apply for it rather than proactively contacting schools to ask what they needs. That is not the system we have. Effectively, we do not have a State education system. In Finland, there is one school per geographical area and that is it. There is then the bizarre scenario of schools here having to raise money for whatever kind of units they want, and pressure on the parents associations to come up with the money. It is a bizarre circle, and it is not sustainable anymore. That is my first point.

Is there a proactive way of interacting with and inspecting schools, rather than responding to the board of management? Can the Department say that in 2023 it is not acceptable that an infant has to leave his or her class and be accompanied down the corridor to go to the toilet, that classes in a particular school have been taking place in a prefab for 27 years, that the windows are so high in a classroom or that classrooms are not properly insulated? Is the Department always dependent on boards of management contacting it? If that is the case, schools in more advantaged areas will always do better. On the boards of management in such schools, there will be an architect, a barrister or, God help us, a politician. Other boards of management will not have that.

My second question relates to the particular case of Gaelcholáiste Reachrann, a second level school in Donaghmede. If anybody were to visit and engage with that school community, you would wonder how they have kept faith at all in any system that supposedly exists to empower their educational experience. Generations of children have gone through that school, which operations out of dilapidated, unsafe and depressing prefabricated buildings.

They have gone through every single process you can think of to enhance the situation, but it is an embarrassment whenever a political representative visits because there does not seem to be a shift, a move, a process or a day people can look towards and say by that stage everything will have been enhanced.

Those are my contributions. One is on how the Department proactively engages with schools. Does it wait for schools to come to it, which I feel is unfair, or does the Department go out and contact and demand of boards of management that they have better oversight of the health and safety implications? I understand, and maybe Mr. Loftus can correct me on this, that if the fire safety officer was to walk into half the schools in the country, they would not be allowed to open the next day. Mr. Loftus can contradict me on that but that has always been my understanding.

My second question is, fundamentally, in the case of Gaelcholáiste Reachrann in Donaghmede, at what point will we enhance the education experience for those young people and the staff, who need it?